LABOR  IN  THE 
CHANGING  WORLD 


R.M.MACIVER 


AGO         1480 


LABOR  IN  THE 
CHANGING  WORLD 


BY 

R.  M.  MAcIVER 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 

TORONTO 
J.  M.  DENT  &  SONS 


COPYRIGHT,  1919 
Bv  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Resented 


Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America 


UNIVERSITY  OF  SOUTHERN  CUfFWA  LIRRAF 


PREFACE 

Now  that  the  conflict  of  nations  is  ended,  let 
us  hope  forever,  another  conflict,  the  abiding  and 
paramount  issue  between  labor  and  capital,  takes 
the  center  of  the  stage.  What  is  that  issue? 
Whither  is  it  driving  us?  What  way  of  deliver- 
ance is  possible  from  the  grievous  disturbances 
and  monstrous  evils  which  it  reveals  ?  These  ques- 
tions I  have  sought  to  discuss  and  if  possible  to 
answer  in  this  little  book. 

I  have  limited  myself  to  the  central  question,  the 
place  of  labor  in  the  industrial  system.  The  real 
issue  lies  beyond  the  recriminations  in  which  both 
sides  indulge.  It  is  of  course  natural  that  the 
workers  should  insist  on  the  exploiting  selfishness 
of  employers  in  general,  and  that  employers 
should  charge  the  workers  in  general  with  slack- 
ness and  irresponsibility.  Each  party  can  bring 
evidence  to  support  its  indictment.  But  what  is 
the  conclusion?  That  workers,  in  the  situation  of 
employers,  would  be  less  grasping?  Or  that  em- 
ployers would  be  more  industrious  and  "loyal"  if 


vi  PREFACE 

put  in  the  place  of  working  men?  Of  course  not. 
And  if  not,  although  the  aforementioned  evidence 
is  symptomatic,  the  recrimination,  the  ethical  con- 
demnation, is  vain.  For  it  is  the  difference  in 
situation  that  evokes  the  difference  in  character. 
It  is  due  to  the  unlike  fate  of  like-motived  human 
beings  within  the  economic  system.  The  system, 
with  its  assignment  of  power  and  lack  of  power,  of 
opportunity  and  lack  of  opportunity,  the  system 
with  its  evocation  of  the  tempers  and  attitudes 
akin  to  the  necessities  which  it  imposes — the  sys- 
tem alone  is  impeached. 

Every  great  social  division  divides  also,  at  just 
this  point,  the  thoughts  of  men.  For  it  raises  this 
fundamental  question:  Shall  we  impute  the  re- 
sponsibility to  human  nature  primarily,  assuming 
that  the  system,  or  lack  of  system,  within  which 
the  division  falls,  is  on  the  whole  consequence  and 
not  cause ;  or  have  we  ground  for  the  belief  that  a 
practicable  change  of  system  would  mitigate,  if 
not  heal,  the  division  ?  The  conservative  answers, 
"You  must  first  change  human  nature,"  assuming 
also,  as  a  rule,  that  this  is  not  practicable,  perhaps 
not  desirable.  The  advocate  of  reform  answers 
that  a  change  of  system  can,  without  changing 


PREFACE  vii 

human  nature  at  all,  reveal  a  change  of  heart. 
Most  obviously  this  question  is  raised  to-day  in 
respect  of  the  disastrous  international  divisions  of 
the  civilized  world;  and  according  as  men  in  gen- 
eral are  led  to  accept  one  or  the  other  of  these 
alternatives,  the  whole  future  of  the  world  will 
turn  this  way  or  that. 

And  surely  no  less  may  be  said  of  this  other 
great  cause  of  offense,  the  economic  division 
summed  up  in  the  words  "labor"  and  "capital." 
Have  we  any  basis  here  for  the  more  optimistic 
view  that  a  change  of  system  can  precede  and 
evoke  a  change  of  heart — or,  more  precisely,  for 
that  is  all  our  argument  requires,  an  effective 
change  of  mood? 

Patchwork  will  certainly  not  avail,  and  I  have 
therefore  laid  no  stress  on  the  half-hearted  and 
sometimes  deceptive  devices  that  pass  under  the 
names  of  profit-sharing  and  "co-partnership,"  nor 
yet  on  those  conciliation  schemes  which,  however 
useful  in  their  own  place,  are  calculated  to  bolster 
up  the  existent  order.  On  the  other  hand,  the  suc- 
cess of  such  experiments  as  have  seriously  at- 
tempted to  organize  production  to  serve  the  com- 
mon interest  of  the  producers  encourages  the  hope 


viii  PREFACE 

that  a  real  program  of  industrial  reconstruction  is 
not  only  necessary  but  feasible. 

But,  apart  from  such  experiments,  there  are  cer- 
tain general  considerations  which  may  here  be 
advanced.  It  is  in  the  first  place  necessary  to 
regard  the  industrial  system  as  an  evolution  with- 
out fixity  or  finality,  and  assuredly  dependent  at 
any  time  on  the  motives  of  its  half-creators  and 
half-slaves — for  it  is  true  of  every  institution  that 
it  both  springs  from  and  dominates  the  wills  of 
men.  When  the  will  of  a  large  class  within  the 
system  changes — and  I  try  to  show  in  what  fol- 
lows that  it  has  been  changing  rapidly — the  system 
itself  either  changes  or  breaks.  It  breaks  if  the 
dominant  minority-will  is  so  obdurate  as  to  induce 
a  counter  spirit  of  dominance  on  the  opposite  side. 
Then  we  have  Bolshevism,  the  seed  of  which  is 
always  sown  and  nurtured  by  its  bitterest  foes. 

On  the  other  hand  no  open-minded  observer, 
certainly  no  educator,  can  fail  to  be  struck  with 
the  wonderful  way  in  which  men  normally  respond 
to  the  institutional  systems  within  which  they 
grow.  There  is  a  most  significant  contrast  be- 
tween the  enduring,  and  often  too  rigid,  frame- 
work of  institution  and  custom  on  the  one  hand 


PREFACE  ix 

and  on  the  other  the  responsive  spirit  of  each 
fresh  generation  before  it  in  turn  takes  on  the  cast 
of  time.  Change  the  system,  and  beyond  doubt 
you  change  also  the  thoughts  of  men.  Wherever 
it  is  practicable  to  remold  the  system  to  express 
a  new  ideal,  it  is  certain  that  you  thereby  perpetu- 
ate that  ideal.  Now  a  world-earthquake  has  shak- 
en the  social  system,  including  also  the  economic 
order.  The  forces  allied  to  the  old  order  are  al- 
ready at  work  to  restore  and  to  confirm  it.  Those 
who  believe  in  a  new  order  must  seize  the  perhaps 
brief  time  of  opportunity.  They  must  proclaim 
alike  an  ideal  and  a  practicable  way  of  its  attain- 
ment. 

The  root  of  industrial  evil  is  the  present  wage- 
system.  The  ideal  towards  which  we  must  strive 
is  some  more  cooperative  order  of  production 
within  which  there  at  length  remains,  as  we  now 
understand  these  terms,  neither  "capitalism"  nor 
"wagery,"  neither  wanton  upliftedness  nor  haz- 
ardous dependence,  neither  prodigal  waste  nor 
sheer  degrading  poverty.  Thus  roughly  stated, 
the  ideal  doubtless  suggests  revolution.  All  ideals 
do,  or  else  they  remain  forever  ideals.  But  revo- 
lution as  a  result  and  not  a  means,  revolution  as 


x  PREFACE 

the  significance  of  a  new  order  duly  established  by 
intelligent  process,  not  the  blind  catastrophe  of 
despair.  Perhaps  fate  offers  us  finally  the  choice 
between  these  two. 

There  is  a  temper  of  revolution  which  is  but 
the  other  side  of  the  seal  of  tyranny.  From  such 
no  new  order  can  arise,  only  a  grotesque  reversal 
of  established  dominance.  There  is  also  a  tem- 
per of  revolution  which,  with  no  less  prophetic 
a  vision  of  the  end  to  be  attained,  would  yet  build 
in  patient  determination,  rejecting  no  stone  that 
may  be  fitted  into  the  new  edifice.  From  such 
alone  can  a  new  order  proceed. 

What  is  to  be  feared  for  America  is  that  the 
apathy  of  the  majority  and  the  narrow  domina- 
tion of  a  plutocracy  owning  unprecedented  power 
may,  while  repressing  the  constructive  spirit,  pro-« 
voke  yet  further  in  the  subject  ranks  of  labor  the 
spirit  of  anarchy  and  overthrow.  This  would  be 
countered  by  an  increasing  conservatism  in  the 
rest  of  the  community,  including  the  superior 
ranks  of  labor.  Thus  America,  which  already, 
for  all  its  magnificent  opportunities,  is  laggard  in 
the  movement  of  industrial  progress,  may  prove 
that  nowhere  is  it  so  hard  to  change  an  old  order 
as  in  a  new  world. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

PREFACE v 

I.  THE   ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS  AND  THE 

SHAKEN  SUPERSTRUCTURE  ....  i 

II.  THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     .  27 

III.  THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      .     .  39 

IV.  THE  WIDENING  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR  .  64 

V.  THE  WASTE  OF  THE  PRESENT  INDUSTRIAL 

SYSTEM 77 

VI.  THE  CRISIS 93 

VII.  INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT 

BRITAIN:  PLANS  AND  PROPOSALS    .     .  104 

VIII.  LIONS  IN  THE  PATH 133 

IX.  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD:  A  CON- 
TRAST IN  LABOR  CONDITIONS    .     .     .  156 

X.  RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  TRADE  UNION  168 

XI.  LABOR,  IMMIGRATION,  AND  THE  BIRTH- 
RATE      183 

XII.  THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN 197 

XIII.  THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS       ....  210 

XIV.   SOME  PRACTICAL  CONCLUSIONS  .  226 


LABOR  IN  THE 
CHANGING   WORLD 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  ECONOMIC   FOUNDATIONS  AND  THE  SHAKEN 
SUPERSTRUCTURE 

The  assault  of  new  ideas.  The  position  of  the 
State:  the  new  limits  to  Its  sovereign  power. 
The  transformation  of  the  economic  order. 
The  significance  of  "labor  unrest." 

The  foundation  of  economic  order  In  the  in- 
creasing necessity  of  cooperative  production. 
Importance  In  this  connection  of  the  growth 
of  productivity  as  compared  with  population. 
The  alternative  channels  of  the  energy  and 
resources  so  liberated. 

I 

IT  is  the  law  of  nature,  for  nations  and  for 
men,  that  they  pass  through  the  crumbling  stages 
of  past  life  to  new  experiences.  These  they  must 
receive  or  they  inevitably  decay.  There  are 


2       LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

periods  of  secretion  and  gestation  and  also  of 
travail  and  birth;  periods  of  quiescence  and  also 
of  struggle;  periods  of  slow  growth  and  also  of 
violent  transition.  It  is  our  fortune  to  live  in 
the  disturbing  days  of  great  changes,  fulfilled  and 
impending,  in  a  time  of  national  travail  and  of 
new  deliverance.  The  war,  it  is  said,  has  shaken 
society  to  its  foundations, —  to  its  foundations,  yes, 
but  the  foundations  themselves  remain.  The  su- 
perstructure is  shaken,  but  the  foundations  are 
in  the  heart  of  humanity;  and,  while  that  endures, 
while  men  hunger  and  thirst,  while  they  love  and 
fear,  while  their  wants  and  strivings  can  be  satis- 
fied only  by  obedience  to  the  abiding  laws  both 
of  their  own  nature  and  of  the  outer  world,  the 
bases  of  society  endure. 

I  am  not  advocating  the  hoary  fallacy  that  hu- 
man nature  does  not  change.  Man  changes  all 
things  else  upon  the  earth  because  he  changes 
himself  first.  He  builds  new  worlds  because  he 
is  himself  different.  He  widens  the  bounds  of 
society  because  his  own  mind  is  widened.  He 
masters  the  forces  of  nature  because  his  own  in* 
telligent  force  has  grown.  But,  though  social 
forms  and  institutions  pass  away,  the  ties  which 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS          3 

bind  men  in  society  are  not  thereby  broken.  Men 
remain  dependent  upon  one  another;  rather,  they 
grow  more  dependent  on  one  another.  The  com- 
mon welfare  grows  more,  not  less,  real ;  more,  not 
less,  insistent.  The  foundations  of  society  can 
never  fail  while  the  truth  stands  that  the  essential 
needs  of  men  are  best  or  alone  fulfilled  in  the  mu- 
tuality and  cooperation. 

The  foundations  remain,  but  the  superstructure 
of  institution  is  badly  shaken.  There  is  scarcely 
a  social  institution  that  the  storm  of  war  has  left 
wholly  unscathed.  Some  will  soon  be  repaired, 
but  others  must  be  rebuilt.  These  last,  though 
bulwarked  by  custom,  had  been  weakened  by  the 
continued  assault  of  new  ideas,  by  the  growing 
urgency  of  conscious  needs  seeking  a  satisfaction 
these  failed  to  give.  The  war  broke  the  seals  of 
custom  and  thereby  gave  potency  to  the  attacking 
forces. 

For  in  these  days  of  history-making  it  is  well 
to  remind  ourselves  that  the  only  thing  that  does 
make  history  is  a  change  in  men's  ideas.  Finally, 
it  is  not  wars  or  conquests,  not  King  or  Emperor 
or  President,  it  is  the  ideas  which  they  represent 
or  incarnate,  the  ideas  which  they  stimulate  or 


4      LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

repress,  that  change  the  face  of  the  world.  Actions 
fade  into  memories,  but  ideas  live  as  long  as  there 
is  a  brain  to  think  them.  Over  them  alone  time 
has  no  sway,  but  it  is  they  that  give  time  its  mean- 
ing. We  divide  them  into  epochs  because  of 
the  changing  thoughts  of  men.  Actions  are  cir- 
cumscribed by  the  hour  and  the  place.  Ideas  are 
winged  and  seek  all  over  the  earth  for  the  re- 
ceptive soil;  just  as  the  germ  mysteriously  appears 
where  its  appropriate  breeding  place  is  prepared, 
so  wherever  the  spiritual  soil  is  favorable  the  idea 
finds  its  way.  It  waits  patiently  for  the  hour 
and  the  place  that  it  may  strike  root,  and  there 
it  grows  and  fructifies  and  can  be  extruded  only 
by  the  presence  of  another  and  more  potent  idea. 
An  old  Scottish  theologian  used  to  speak  of  the 
"expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection."  The 
phrase  may  be  applied  to  ideas.  No  force,  no 
medicine,  nothing  but  the  expulsive  power  of  a 
new  idea  can  drive  out  that  vital  germ  from  the 
mind  of  man. 

The  war  confounded  the  general  sense  of  se- 
curity which  exists  in  an  ordered  society,  disturbed 
that  complacency  which  the  more  fortunate  wrap 
around  them  as  a  garment,  and  still  more  com- 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS          5 

pletely  dissipated  that  spirit  of  acquiescence  which 
the  less  fortunate  acquire  as  part  of  their  ad- 
justment to  life's  conditions.  The  ferment  of 
ideas  is  more  advanced  in  the  older  lands,  but  it 
inevitably  spreads,  as  do  most  socio-economic 
movements,  from  east  to  west.  It  is  well,  there- 
fore, that  we  should  ask  ourselves,  with  special 
reference  to  the  labor  situation,  just  what  has 
been  shaken  and  what  remains  as  solid  rock. 

First,  the  position  and  power  of  the  State  itself 
has  been  subject  to  the  assault  of  new  question- 
ings. Never  in  history  has  the  State  been  so 
supreme,  so  absolute,  as  it  became  under  the  ne- 
cessity of  war.  Never  did  it  enter  so  intimately 
and  so  irresistibly  into  the  life  of  every  individ- 
ual, assigning  to  millions  the  issues  of  life  and  of 
death,  prescribing  what  men  shall  work  at,  what 
they  shall  eat,  what  they  shall  wear,  even  what 
they  shall  think.  In  earlier  times  the  theory  of 
absolutism  went  further,  but  it  required  the  mod- 
ern centralized  mechanism  of  production,  it  re- 
quired the  modern  press,  it  required  the  network 
of  railway,  telegraph  and  telephone,  to  arm  the 
central  political  authority  with  swift  and  univer- 
sal dominion  over  the  lives  of  men.  And  yet 


underneath  there  were  forces  at  work  which  were 
preparing  to  challenge  as  never  before  the  old 
principle  of  State-sovereignty.  While  the  menace 
of  autocracy  was  being  thrust  down,  democracy 
itself  in  its  historic  significance  was  insecure  and 
full  of  doubt.  The  struggle  for  democracy  had 
been,  historically,  a  struggle  for  the  liberty  of 
representative  parliaments.  The  struggle  seemed 
over,  the  liberty  achieved,  and  men  felt  a  curi- 
ous dissatisfaction  with  the  result.  Consider  the 
mother  of  parliaments  herself.  It  was  only  in 
1911  (when  the  veto  of  the  Lords  was  broken) 
that  the  last  stage  of  its  emancipation  was  com- 
plete, the  end  of  an  age-long  struggle.  And  yet 
when  the  war  was  over  and  the  time  came  to 
elect  a  parliament  that,  constitutionally,  must  de- 
cide the  most  fateful  questions  ever  submitted 
to  any  body  of  men,  most  observers  recorded 
an  unwonted  indifference  on  the  part  of  the  elec- 
torate. Many  felt  that  it  was  not  there,  or  by 
these  representatives,  that  the  fate  of  the  world 
would  be  decided.  Within  the  nation  there  had 
grown  up  other  powers,  great  new  associations 
that  the  political  sovereign  had  perforce  to  recog- 
nize. With  the  most  formidable  of  these  powers, 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS          7 

the  opposing  forces  of  capital  and  of  labor,  the 
English  parliament,  all-powerful  in  name,  omni- 
competent  by  constitution,  has  been  compelled  to 
treat,  as  one  power  with  others,  ostensibly  acting 
as  mediator,  but  doing  so  not  of  choice  but  of 
necessity.  The  State  is  no  longer  Leviathan,  su- 
preme and  alone.  It  is  one  collectivity  among 
others.  It  finds  new  and  strange  limits  to  its 
power. 

In  the  international  situation  another  change 
of  the  political  structure  is  being  prepared.  Fed- 
eration of  peoples,  which  nearly  all  men  regard  as 
desirable  in  some  form,  cannot  be  attained  without 
a  surrender  of  a  part  of  the  old  sovereignty  of  the 
individual  state.  Besides  the  national  parliament 
there  may  arise  the  international  parliament.  It  is 
well  to  recognize  that  this  would  profoundly  affect 
the  currents  of  national  life,  that  it  would  mean 
the  stimulation  of  new  ideas,  that  it  would  mean  in 
particular  a  further  and  progressive  revision  of 
the  idea  of  political  sovereignty.  It  would  create 
new  problems  for  democracy,  showing  that  the 
mere  achievement  of  full  parliamentary  institu- 
tions, far  from  being  the  final  solution  of  the  prob- 


8       LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

lem  of  liberty  and  order,  was  but  the  first  step  on 
a  long  journey  of  peril  and  of  hope. 

Enough  may  have  been  said  to  explain  the 
statement  that  the  political  structure  has  been 
shaken  by  the  power  of  new  ideas.  Much  that 
once  seemed  sure  has  grown  uncertain,  much  that 
once  men  accepted  as  cardinal  political  principle 
Is  questioned.  Those  who  look  for  finality  in 
human  institutions  must  journey  elsewhere  on  their 
fruitless  quest.  I  turn  next  to  the  economic  struc- 
ture, the  true  storm-center  of  the  struggle. 

The  present  economic  system  is  often  described 
as  a  competitive  one.  The  description  has  long 
ceased  to  be  accurate,  if  it  ever  was.  In  reality 
the  present  system  is  the  unstable  resultant  of  two 
opposing  sets  of  forces,  the  competitive  and  the 
anti-competitive,  and  the  latter  has  been  gaining 
ground  at  the  expense  of  the  former.  This  is 
revealed  very  markedly  in  three  ways :  in  the  grow- 
ing control  of  the  state  over  economic  conditions, 
ranging  from  actual  ownership  to  such  legal  de- 
terminations as  Factory  Acts  ensure;  secondly, 
in  the  vast  modern  organization  of  capital,  by 
means  of  amalgamations,  trusts,  cartels,  selling 
agreements,  interlocking  directorates,  associations 


9 

of  manufacturers,  associations  of  agricultural  pro- 
ducers, alliance  of  banks  with  trust  companies  and 
industrial  corporations,  and  so  forth ;  and,  thirdly, 
in  the  extension  of  unionism  among  the  workers. 
The  semi-automatism  of  the  competitive  system 
is  being  in  part  superseded  by  the  conscious  ef- 
fort of  these  three  great  forces  to  gain  or  retain 
control  of  the  productive  process,  and,  perhaps 
still  more,  by  the  struggle  between  the  two  latter, 
capital  and  labor,  to  obtain  the  greater  share  of 
the  product  and  in  the  effort  to  use  the  machinery 
of  the  state. 

While  these  mighty  contests  are  straining  the 
whole  industrial  fabric,  the  strife  is  gradually 
concentrating  around  the  wage-system.  Here  is 
the  real  significance  of  what  we  call  labor  unrest. 
As  it  grows  self-conscious  it  proves  to  be  nothing 
less  than  an  ever  more  resolute  attack  upon  a  sys- 
tem. We  shall  go  far  astray  if  we  think  that 
praise  or  condemnation,  of  either  side,  has  any 
relevance  to  the  situation.  The  worker,  if  he 
changed  places  with  the  employer,  would  be  over- 
persuaded  by  the  system  even  as  the  employer  is; 
the  employer,  if  he  changed  places  with  the  work- 
er, would  likewise  learn  the  bitterness  and  inertia 


io     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

of  wage-earning.  Employers  and  workers  alike 
are  bound  up  in  a  system  which  neither  has  created, 
but  naturally  the  attack  comes  from  the  side  which 
suffers  from  it  most.  Labor  unrest  witnesses 
to  a  deep-rooted  evil.  It  springs  from  poverty, 
hazard  and  privation,  but  still  more  from  the 
sense  of  exploitation  and  the  frustration  of  op- 
portunity— for  all  of  which  it  accuses  the  wage- 
system.  Labor  unrest  is  not  something  to  be  ex- 
orcised, it  is  not  even  something  to  be  feared. 
It  is  part  of  what  distinguishes  the  human  being 
from  the  sheep.  It  is  inevitable  in  a  civilization 
which  leaves  from  twenty  to  forty  per  cent  of 
the  industrial  population  in  a  state  of  sheer  desti- 
tution, and  which  concentrates,  as  in  Great 
Britain,  two-thirds  of  the  total  wealth  of  the  coun- 
try in  the  hands  of  one-seventieth  of  its  popu- 
lation, or,  as  in  America,  the  same  proportion  in 
the  hands  of  one-fiftieth  of  the  population.  It 
is  part  of  the  eternal  striving  of  humanity  for 
a  better  and  fuller  life,  fraught  no  doubt  with  all 
the  difficulty  and  aberration,  but  also  with  all  the 
necessity  which  accompanies  every  process  of 
growth.  The  unrest  of  to-day  makes  the  civiliza- 
tion of  to-morrow.  Had  there  been  no  unrest  in 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        n 

the  stone  age,  the  world  would  be  still  in  the  stone 
age. 

It  is  our  duty  to  understand  this  momentous 
uprising,  to  examine  it  with  clear  and  fearless 
eyes,  to  search  beyond  symptoms  for  causes.  Let 
us  not  think  of  it  as  a  mere  troubler  of  the  peace. 
It  exists  because  there  is  no  peace.  Let  us  not 
dismiss  it  as  agitation,  as  disturbance  of  the  es- 
tablished order.  It  exists  because  there  is  deep- 
seated  disorder.  We  should  no  more  meet  it  with 
reproval  and  indictment  than  a  physician  re- 
proaches or  indicts  a  disease.  We  should  no 
more  seek  to  remove  it  by  vain  palliatives  or 
vainer  incantations  than  a  physician  seeks  thus  to 
remove  the  causes  of  disease.  If  those  of  us  who 
are  not  in  the  ranks  of  labor  do  not  go  out  with 
sympathy  and  understanding  to  apprehend  the 
human  meaning  of  these  discontents,  we  are  but 
helping  to  give  them  narrower,  more  bitter,  and 
more  explosive  character.  Blindness  is  always 
the  counterpart  of  revolution. 

A  great  new  consciousness  of  need  has  arisen 
within  the  present  system  of  industry.  It  is  in 
part  the  product  of  education,  and  in  part  the 
product  of  machinery.  For  education,  the  educa- 


12    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

tion  fostered  by  experience  rather  than  by  the 
schools,  has  brought  a  greater  consciousness  at 
once  of  dignity,  of  power,  and  of  possibility.  It 
teaches  men  to  refuse  the  position  of  being  a 
commodity,  to  be  bought  and  sold  without  regard 
for  the  human  costs  of  the  buying  and  selling. 
When  once  that  degradation  becomes  conscious, 
it  ceases  to  be  long  tolerable,  and  the  days  of  any 
system  which  makes  it  necessary  are  numbered. 
Machinery  was  in  a  measure  the  means  of  that 
degradation.  Machinery  massed  men  and  deper- 
sonalized their  work.  It  destroyed  the  old  crafts- 
manship— the  intimate  relation  of  the  worker  to 
the  integral  product  of  his  hands.  Machinery  is 
man's  great  agent  of  deliverance  from  the  drudg- 
ery of  life,  but  it  offers  deliverance  at  a  price. 
The  price  is  the  loss  of  the  specialized  skill  known 
as  craftsmanship.  Machinery  breaks  down  the 
barriers  between  crafts.  It  does  not  destroy  skill 
but  it  generalizes  it.  It  specializes  function  and 
generalizes  skill.  It  has  destroyed  the  mystery, 
the  exclusiveness,  and  the  privilege  of  the  old 
crafts.  No  longer  can  the  workman  find  in  his 
specialized  function  the  living  interest  which  a 
men  seeks  in  his  work.  He  must  now  gain  less 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        13 

narrow  interests,  even  as  his  skill  is  less  narrow. 
He  must  share  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  process 
of  production  of  which  his  work  is  a  fragment. 
He  must  consciously  cooperate  in  production,  as 
one  who  is  a  partner  in  production.  The  absence 
of  this  spirit  of  cooperation  is  the  final  indictment 
of  the  present  breaking  system,  and  there  will  be 
no  peace  until  that  spirit  is  regained.  Ask  almost 
any  employer,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  the  work- 
men have  no  interest  in  their  work.  Lord  Lever- 
hulme,  for  example,  declares  that  the  present  sys- 
tem turns  the  workers  into  a  race  of  ca'canny 
shirkers  and  slackers.  What  can  you  expect? 
Has  it  not  always  been  true  that  the  hireling  flees 
because  he  is  a  hireling? 

The  loss  is  twofold,  in  the  effect  upon  charac- 
ter and  in  the  effect  upon  productivity.  When 
men  lose  interest  in  their  'work  they  lose  the  sense 
of  responsibility.  Much  of  the  energy  of  life  is 
lost,  and  much  is  misdirected.  The  demand  for 
mere  excitement  witnesses  to  the  loss  of  a  more 
central  interest.  Because  men  fail  to  find  interest 
in  their  work  they  pursue  the  spurious  excitations 
of  sensationalism,  to  the  provision  of  which  all 
social  institutions,  but  especially  the  press,  the  pic- 


14    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ture  house,  and  the  pulpit,  may  be  perverted. 
The  balked  intrinsic  desire,  the  natural  desire 
of  men  to  fulfill  themselves  in  their  work,  issues 
in  a  restless  craving  for  extrinsic  and  unsatisfy- 
ing stimulation.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the 
direct  economic  loss.  Is  it  not  a  curious  com- 
mentary on  our  economic  order  that  the  great 
mass  of  those  who  produce  should  take  pains  to 
lower  their  own  productivity?  While  in  all  other 
things  men  seek  to  be  efficient,  here  they  seek  not 
uncommonly  to  be  inefficient.  The  sense  of  op- 
posing interests  means,  here  as  elsewhere,  ineffi- 
ciency; the  sense  of  a  common  cause  alone  brings 
cooperation,  and  therefore  efficiency.  But  in  in- 
dustry in  general  there  is  cleavage,  not  coopera- 
tion, and  therefore  inefficiency.  The  general  con- 
clusion is  clear.  A  way  of  cooperation,  of  partner- 
ship, must  be  found  which  will  unite  all  producers 
in  the  work  of  production,  making  it  the  common 
interest  of  them  all,  so  that  men  cease  to  feel  as  the 
helots  and  hirelings  of  their  fellowmen.  All  sig- 
nificant schemes  of  industrial  reconstruction,  such 
as  that  of  the  Whitley  Committee  in  Great  Britain, 
are  directed  to  the  attainment  of  this  end.  They 
recognize  the  necessity  for  a  new  order,  a  more 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        15 

representative  order,  a  more  cooperative  order. 
This  cannot  be  attained  without  changes  of  great 
importance  in  the  economic  superstructure  of  so- 
ciety. 

II 

The  economic  foundations  are  secure.  Every 
advance  of  society,  every  discovery,  every  appli- 
cation of  science,  make  the  foundations  more  se- 
cure. For  they  make  men  more  dependent  upon 
one  another  over  greater  areas  of  community. 
Already  not  one  of  us  but  employs  unwittingly 
the  hands  and  brains  of  countless  thousands  of 
his  fellowmen.  Carlyle  prophetically  saw  it  when 
he  declared  that  not  an  Indian  could  quarrel  with 
his  squaw  but  the  world  must  smart  for  it — the 
price  of  beaver  would  rise!  That  hyperbole 
grows  in  fact  more  true  with  every  advance  of 
science,  for  science  destroys  isolation  and  estab- 
lishes interdependence.  The  history  of  man  is  in 
one  aspect  the  history  of  the  growth  of  an  or- 
ganization which  diversifies  the  work  of  each, 
making  each  more  dependent  on  others  in  order 
that  by  the  surrender  of  self-sufficiency  he  may  re- 
ceive back  a  thousandfold  in  fullness  of  life.  It  is 


16     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

becoming  true  between  nations  as  between  men. 
The  world  knows  to-day  that  a  nation  cannot  in- 
jure another  without  doing  grave  injury  to  itself. 
What  it  has  yet  to  learn  is  the  happier  counter- 
part of  that  truth,  that  a  nation  cannot  serve  itself, 
cannot  honestly  prosper,  without  benefiting  other 
nations  also. 

Cooperation  is  more  fruitful  than  conflict. 
Man  works  to  satisfy  his  need,  and  seeks  to  do 
so  in  the  most  economical  way.  He  therefore 
chooses  more  and  more  the  method  of  coopera- 
tion. Economy  and  society  go  hand  in  hand. 
Where  there  is  no  society  there  is  waste.  Where 
there  is  social  dissension  there  is  waste.  The  great- 
est waste  in  the  modern  world,  from  the  economic 
standpoint,  exceeding  even  the  waste  of  the  war- 
fare between  nations,  is  that  of  the  warfare  be- 
tween Labor  and  Capital.  If  that  seems  a  hard 
saying,  it  is  because  we  have  not  realized  the  ex- 
traordinary wastefulness  of  industrial  disharmony 
— the  waste  of  unemployment,  the  waste  of  labor 
turnover,  above  all  the  waste  of  unwilling  task 
work.  This  warfare  will  never  be  ended,  it  will  al- 
most certainly  grow  worse,  until  labor  ceases  to  be 
mere  labor  and  capital  to  be  mere  capital.  This 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        17 

means  equality  of  opportunity,  so  that  neither 
status  nor  accumulated  wealth,  but  natural  endow- 
ment and  quality  shall  determine  leadership  in  in- 
dustry. It  means  security  against  exploitation,  so 
that  none  shall  grow  rich  out  of  the  poverty  of  oth- 
ers. It  means  assurance  of  employment,  so  that 
none  who  have  the  will  and  capacity  to  work  shall 
seek  for  it  in  vain.  It  means  a  more  representative 
system  of  industry,  so  that  all  who  share  in  its 
toil  shall  have  the  right  to  express  their  needs 
through  an  orderly  constitution.  It  means  indus- 
trial citizenship,  so  that  no  class  shall  be  without 
a  voice  in  the  determination  of  its  fate.  Let  us 
clearly  understand  that  the  alternative  to  these 
conditions  is  no  longer,  in  the  present  temper  of 
our  civilization,  the  retention  of  the  present  sys- 
tem— it  is  the  ferment  of  revolution,  and  revolu- 
tion can  gain,  by  whatever  violence  and  disturb- 
ance, no  other  ends  than  these.  It  may  attempt 
more,  but  it  cannot  obtain  more.  Any  economic 
order  whatever  must  rest  on  the  economic  founda- 
tions of  society.  Men  must  finally  adopt  the  sys- 
tem which  is  in  the  widest  sense  most  economical, 
the  system  which,  with  the  least  expenditure,  pro- 
duces most  of  what  men  require  to  satisfy  their. 


i8     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

needs.  Neither  the  selfishness  of  the  few  nor  the 
tyranny  of  the  many  can  long  defeat  the  lesson 
of  experience.  Because  cooperation  is  in  the 
long  run  most  economical,  men  must  in  the  long 
run  resort  to  cooperation.  They  must,  whether 
they  desire  it  or  not,  obtain  their  individual  ends 
through  economic  solidarity. 

There  was  only  one  lion  in  the  path  which 
could  have  made  this  progress  impossible.  The 
most  formidable  question,  within  the  economic 
sphere,  which  any  man  has  ever  asked,  was  that 
raised  by  Malthus.  Malthus  raised  the  question 
of  productivity  versus  population.  He  held  that 
there  was  a  constant  tendency  for  population  to 
outrun  productivity.  The  increase  of  mankind 
was  naturally  more  rapid  than  the  increase  of  the 
means  of  life.  If  this  were  true,  then  men  must 
always  be  subject,  in  the  absence  of  a  prudential 
control  which  Malthus  thought  desirable  but  rare, 
to  endless  conflict,  and  the  economy  of  coopera- 
tion could  never  be  established.  But  the  period 
that  has  elapsed  since  the  works  of  Malthus  first 
disturbed  the  optimism  of  the  early  nineteenth 
century  has  witnessed  developments  which  have 
removed  that  terror  and  implanted,  in  the  more 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        19 

fearful-minded,  another  of  a  very  different  kind. 
Falling  birth-rate  and  falling  death-rate,  in  all 
civilized  countries,  witness  to  profound  changes 
in  the  social  order.  Into  the  significance  of  these 
changes  we  cannot  here  enter.  It  must  suffice  to 
state  the  conclusion,  which  many  facts  and  figures 
could  be  brought  forward  to  substantiate,  that 
there  is  now  every  reason  to  believe  that  pro- 
ductivity is  advancing  more  rapidly  than  popula- 
tion. The  period  of  war  was  a  sad  exception  and 
yet  the  unheard-of  economic  waste  of  that  period, 
while  yet  the  general  standard  of  living  suffered 
comparatively  little,  furnished  a  remarkable  proof 
of  the  general  truth.  In  all  civilized  communities 
there  is  created  in  every  normal  year  a  surplus 
of  production  over  consumption,  a  surplus  which, 
as  increased  capital,  can  be  made  to  enhance  con- 
tinually the  general  standard  of  economic  pros- 
perity. 

This  is  a  fact  of  immense  significance.  It  opens 
up  a  prospect  full  of  hope.  It  points  to  a  time, 
in  the  quite  near  future,  when  a  recognized  mini- 
mum of  material  comfort  shall  eliminate  the  sor- 
did destitution  in  which  multitudes  are  living  to- 
day. The  philosopher  Godwin  held  the  view 


20     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

that  in  the  truly  scientific  age  half  an  hour's  work 
a  day  would  suffice  for  the  satisfaction  of  ma- 
terial needs.  We  may  think  such  a  statement 
absurd  and  Utopian,  but  it  is  worth  while  reflect- 
ing that  probably  some  such  minute  fraction  of 
modern  industrial  activity  is  in  many  directions  as 
productive  as  the  whole  weary  day  of  work  which 
our  ancestors  of  not  many  generations  back  en- 
dured. The  spindles  of  Lancashire  to-day  pro- 
duce as  much  as  would  have  required  the  services 
of  two  hundred  million  men  unaided  by  machin- 
ery. Of  course  needs  grow  with  the  power  of 
satisfying  them.  Need  is  the  hydra  which  when- 
ever one  head  is  cut  away  grows  two  new  ones 
in  its  place.  If  it  were  not  so,  there  would  be  in 
the  world  to-day  no  poverty  and  little  wealth. 

Let  me  dwell  for  a  little  on  this  hydra  charac- 
ter of  human  needs.  It  has  an  important  applica- 
tion. When  an  original  need  is  satisfied,  two 
new  possibilities  of  satisfaction  are  revealed. 
When,  for  instance,  men  have  provided  for  their 
need  of  food  their  former  desire  may  go  out  to- 
wards a  finer  diet,  not  more  food  but  different,  or 
it  may  be  diverted  into  some  different  channel  al- 
together. When  all  the  primary  organic  needs  of 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        21 

men  are  satisfied,  men  may  either  refine  on  these, 
seeking  their  more  luxurious  fulfillment,  or  they 
may  pass  to  the  satisfaction  of  what  we  may  call 
higher  needs,  cultural  needs.  Usually,  of  course, 
both  directions  are  pursued  together,  and  the 
character  of  a  civilization  is  defined  by  the  de- 
gree of  stress  it  lays  upon  one  or  the  other.  Capua 
went  one  way  and  Jerusalem  another;  Florence 
went  one  way  and  New  York  another.  In  every 
case  the  foundation  is  the  economic  one,  the  satis- 
faction of  the  primary  needs.  In  Aristotelian 
terms,  there  must  be  life  before  there  can  be  the 
good  life — or  the  luxurious  life.  Man  is  econo- 
mist before  he  is  either  stoic  or  epicurean.  Hence, 
man's  increasing  productivity,  his  increasing  con- 
trol over  the  material  environment,  opens  out  two 
great  avenues  of  life.  Being  liberated  from  the 
pressure  of  organic  necessities,  he  may  be  carried 
by  the  very  momentum  of  the  previous  effort  to 
satisfy  these  into  the  ever  more  intensive  pur- 
suit of  their  endless  varieties  of  refinement.  If 
he  follows  that  way,  and  that  alone,  his  liberation 
is  illusory.  As  the  power  of  satisfaction  grows, 
custom  and  habit  turn  into  necessity  what  was 
formerly  otiosity.  The  pressure  of  necessity  is 


22     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

restored,  with  the  difference  that  a  hundred  ne- 
cessities have  taken  the  place  of  a  few.  I  do  not 
mean  to  imply  that  the  refinement  of  organic 
needs  is  not  itself  a  process  of  great  cultural  sig- 
nificance, but  only  that  the  complete  engrossment 
in  these  prevents  that  greater  liberation  of  the 
spirit  which  the  enjoyment  of  intrinsic  interests 
can  bestow.  This  is  the  other  great  avenue  which 
man's  economic  mastery  prepares.  Here  is  the 
greater  emancipation,  in  the  spirit  of  free  devotion 
to  ends  in  themselves  worth  while,  in  the  pride  not 
of  possession  but  of  the  quality  of  life,  in  the 
satisfaction  of  workmanship  and  art,  in  the  under- 
standing of  men  and  in  the  appreciation  of  na- 
ture, in  the  sense  of  fruition  through  the  exercise 
of  all  man's  faculties.  These  are  the  treasures 
laid  up  in  heaven  which  thieves  never  break 
through  to  steal,  for  taking  does  not  impoverish 
nor  does  withholding  enrich.  This  is  the  living 
bread  which  can  be  distributed  among  the  multi- 
tudes and  grows  the  more  it  is  divided. 

These  intrinsic  satisfactions  are  in  part  the 
alternative  to,  in  part  the  complement  of,  the 
former.  They  are  different  modes  of  seeking 
what  all  men  seek  as  naturally  as  the  plant  the 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        23 

light — the  sense  and  reality,  the  thrill,  of  living. 
One  mode  is  extrinsic,  because  it  is  shallow  and 
impermanent  and  rests  on  comparison  and  con- 
trast; the  other  is  intrinsic,  because  it  is  deep  and 
permanent  and  satisfies  in  the  direct  relation  of 
subject  to  object.  In  our  civilization  this  latter 
avenue  is  all  too  neglected.  If  only  the  claim  of 
intrinsic  interests  were  more  imperative,  it  would 
restrain  the  encroaching  habituation  of  further 
extrinsic  interests,  and  thus  redirect  some  of  the 
enormous  social  expenditure  of  energy  which  the 
satisfaction  of  these  involves.  It  would  thus  in 
time  ensure  for  all  men  that  liberation  from  en- 
grossment in  mere  necessity  which  is  the  final  con- 
dition of  the  fulfillment  of  life. 

The  civilization  of  this  continent,  even  more 
than  that  of  Europe,  needs  to  be  saved  from  ab- 
sorption in  these  extrinsic  interests.  It  was  in- 
evitable, in  a  land  of  great  resources  newly  opened 
to  exploitation,  that  the  extrinsic  interests  should 
dominate  the  mind  and  the  temper.  It  was  in- 
evitable that,  until  the  economic  foundations  were 
fully  laid,  the  cultural  interests  should  be  neg- 
lected. But  this  too  exclusive  devotion  to  exter- 
nal ends  at  last  defeats  itself.  For  it  creates  pov- 


24     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

erty  as  well  as  wealth,  by  an  excessive  diversion 
of  resources  to  material  display.  It  hinders  social 
cooperation  and  stimulates  division.  It  develops 
one  aspect  of  character  at  the  expense  of  another, 
and  robs  life  of  the  finer  satisfactions.  In  the  new 
lands,  where  the  appeal  of  wealth  is  most  insistent, 
there  is  a  development  of  mere  forcefulness  at  the 
expense  of  personality.  It  means  finally  that 
many  who  have  obtained  amply  the  means  to  live 
have  lost  in  the  scramble  the  faculty  of  living.  I 
remember  a  conversation  related  to  me  of  a  New 
York  architect  who  builds  elaborate  houses  for 
wealthy  Americans.  "Do  they  get  any  happiness 
out  of  them?"  he  was  asked.  "No,"  he  replied; 
"it  drives  them  crazy,"  adding,  "and  I  think  it 
will  some  day  drive  me  crazy  too."  So  the  fine 
arts  are  perverted  because  men  have  not  learned 
to  build  on  the  economic  foundations.  They  have 
not  learned  the  lesson  of  the  intrinsic  devotion 
demanded  for  all  permanent  satisfaction.  The 
stones  of  civilization  have  been  quarried  and  cut, 
but  no  formative  soul  has  built  them  into  its  own 
home  and  abiding  monument.  Here  we  have  all 
the  stones  for  the  great  building,  a  land  broad 
and  rich  in  resources,  a  soil  that  yields  as  yet  on 


THE  ECONOMIC  FOUNDATIONS        25 

the  average  but  a  fraction  of  its  potentiality,  a 
people  enduring,  healthy-minded  and  clear-willed. 
What  is  less  manifest  is  the  spirit  of  cooperation 
in  communal  purposes,  the  sense  of  direction  to- 
wards a  goal,  in  a  word,  social  education. 

This  is  true  in  some  sense  of  our  whole  modern 
civilization,  European  as  well  as  American.  Nar- 
row, dividing,  extrinsic  interests,  born  of  engross- 
ment in  material  aims,  have  threatened  civilization 
itself.  They  still  threaten  it,  though  one  great 
peril  is  past.  They  threaten  it  because  men  still 
believe  that  the  gain  of  one  nation  is  necessarily 
the  loss  of  another,  not  understanding  how  much 
more  fruitful,  both  materially  and  spiritually,  is 
cooperation  than  conflict.  Even  the  deep  sense 
of  a  sacred  international  cause,  which  led  multi- 
tudes to  death  and  mutilation  in  willing  but  awful 
devotion,  has  scarcely  sufficed  to  teach  that  lesson. 
They  threaten  it  too  because  men  still  believe 
that  within  industry  the  methods  of  autocracy  and 
oligarchy  are  possible,  in  a  world  that  has  suf- 
fered so  much  in  the  name  of  the  opposite  cause. 
If  recent  events  have  any  lesson  for  us  at  all,  it 
is  that  the  common  interest  must  be  widened,  and 
that  the  narrow  ambitions  of  nation  or  class  in 


26     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

these  days  of  interdependence  must  end  in  mutual 
disaster. 

This  is  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  necessary  to  ap- 
proach the  whole  problem  of  labor  and  its  new 
demands. 


CHAPTER  II 


The  conflict  of  interest  between  labor  and  capital. 
The  new  attitude  of  organized  labor  as  re- 
vealed in  the  causes  of  strikes.  The  danger 
ahead.  A  new  order  or  else  chaos. 

IN  the  flux  of  all  things,  of  ideas  and  of  sys- 
tems, which  the  war  has  hastened  rather  than 
created,  it  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  so  unstable 
an  equilibrium  as  that  of  "capital  and  labor" 
would  remain  as  it  was  before.  On  the  contrary, 
the  situation  has  changed,  rapidly  and  momen- 
tously. It  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  the 
movement  in  question  should  be  understood  as 
widely  as  possible.  Without  understanding, 
tragic  errors  are  inevitable,  and  the  world  we  live 
in  has  had  enough  of  these.  This  matter  con- 
cerns us  all,  whether  we  employ  others  or  serve 
for  hire,  and  will  concern  us  more  closely  in  the 
near  future.  My  object  in  these  pages  is  to  ex- 
plain the  new  situation  as  best  I  can  discern  it. 

37 


28     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

Naturally  it  is  full  of  uncertainties,  and  there  is 
room  for  much  difference  of  opinion.  Such  differ- 
ence is  welcome  and  salutary  so  long  as  it  springs 
from  honest  attempts  to  read  the  situation,  so 
long,  that  is,  as  we  are  not  content  to  follow,  with- 
out questioning,  the  guidance  of  our  own  immedi- 
ate interests  but  seek  to  find,  in  the  light  of  the 
facts,  what  is  to  the  interest  of  the  country  as  a 
whole. 

The  change  in  the  situation  is  due  mainly  to 
a  new  attitude  on  the  part  of  labor.  We  often 
think  of  the  relation  of  capital  and  labor  as  a 
kind  of  warfare,  and  it  is  part  of  the  truth  that 
capital  and  labor,  as  at  present  constituted,  are 
ranged  against  one  another  as  opposing  forces. 
Anyone  who  to-day  speaks  of  the  "essential  iden- 
tity of  interest  between  capital  and  labor"  is  con- 
victed thereby  of  either  simplicity  or  hypocrisy. 
Is  there  identity  between  costs  and  profits?  Is 
not  business  run  for  profits,  and  is  not  labor  a 
cost  from  that  point  of  view?  Does  not  the 
worker  seek  to  enhance  that  "cost"  by  securing 
as  high  wages  as  he  can?  Does  not  the  ordinary 
capitalist  seek  to  minimize  it,  like  other  costs, 
by  employing  the  cheapest  grade  that  will  serve; 


THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     29 

by  getting,  through  long  hours,  low  wages,  and 
intense  application,  as  much  out  of  every  unit 
of  labor  cost  as  he  can;  by  substituting  for  it 
machine-power  whenever  it  pays  to  do  so;  and  in 
general  by  making  for  it  only  such  provision  as 
brings  an  economic  return — which,  be  it  observed, 
is  naturally  less  in  the  case  of  the  worker  than 
in  that  of  the  machine,  for  new  machines  involve 
heavy  capital  expenditure  but  new  workers  can  be 
procured,  seemingly,  with  no  initial  outlay?  We 
may  find  modifying  principles  in  the  "economy  of 
high  wages,"  the  superior  efficiency  of  moderately 
short  hours,  the  saving  effected  by  a  low  percent- 
age of  turnover,  and  so  on;  but,  important  as  these 
principles  are,  their  limits  are  obvious.  Even  if 
they  were  applicable  much  further  than  we  have 
any  reason  to  suppose,  they  would  not  remove  the 
fundamental  difference.  For  how  can  there  be 
identity  of  interest  between  two  parties  one  of 
which  seeks  to  diminish  what  the  other  seeks  to 
augment,  to  one  of  which  accrues  all  of  the  joint 
product  that  it  can  withhold  from  the  other? 

Let  us  be  quite  clear  on  this  point.  There  is 
common  interest  actually  in  so  far  as  cooperation 
exists,  potentially  in  so  far  as  cooperation  is  bene- 


30    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ficial.  We  say  that  labor  and  capital  cooperate 
in  production,  and  that  both  are  equally  necessary 
to  production.  Does  this  mean  that  the  product 
is  due  to  the  joint  activity  of  the  two,  that  there 
is  actually  a  division  of  labor  between  the  two? 
That  is  clearly  too  simple  a  doctrine,  for  of  the 
two  parties  one  merely  owns  the  means  whereby 
the  other  produces.  Capital  so  understood  is  a 
passivity,  not  a  productive  function.  Capital  may 
be  owned  by  an  infant  or  an  idiot  or  an  "estate" 
or  any  other  anonymity.  The  change  of  owner- 
ship would  make  no  difference  to  the  productive 
process  of  such.  It  would  affect  the  distribution 
of  the  product,  not  directly  the  sum  total  produced. 
This  fact  would  be  obvious  were  capital  properly 
distinguished  from  management  and  enterprise, 
which  are  active  functions  in  production.  Capital 
must  be  owned  and  must  be  offered  for  purposes 
of  production,  but  it  need  not,  so  far  as  production 
in  concerned,  be  owned  by  anyone  in  particular. 
So  far  as  production  is  concerned  it  might  be 
owned  by  labor  or  by  management,  it  might  be 
owned  by  the  State  or  the  community.  That  is 
a  matter  of  social  expediency  or  justice,  not  of 
economic  necessity.  The  socialist  position  is  not 


THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     31 

turned  by  the  argument  that  capital  is  as  neces- 
sary as  labor.  The  extremest  revolutionary  can 
still  accept  that  doctrine. 

The  cooperation  of  management  and  workers 
is  something  essentially  different  from  that  of 
labor  and  capital,  and  is  necessary  to  production 
in  an  entirely  different  sense.  The  question  of 
the  relationship  of  management  and  workers 
would  be  a  comparatively  simple  matter  were  it 
not  that  management  is  usually  associated  with 
and  directly  dependent  on  one  only  of  the  two 
parties,  worker  and  capitalist.  Were  it  not  for 
that  one-sided  dependence  we  could  regard  man- 
agement and  workers  as  joint  producers  simply, 
whose  relative  position  and  reward  depended  on 
the  comparative  rarity  of  the  higher  as  compared 
with  the  lower  capacity.  In  this  situation  there 
would  then  be  no  world-shaking  problem,  but 
just  one  of  the  ordinary  matters  of  occupational 
adjustment. 

But  as  between  capitalist  and  worker  the  case  is 
far  more  difficult  and  baffling.  Even  if  we  assume 
that  both  capitalist  and  worker  are  essential  to 
production  does  it  follow  that  the  common  inter- 
est in  production  suffices  as  a  ground  of  agree- 


32     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ment?  Men  produce  in  order  to  possess  and  to 
consume.  With  functions  so  disparate,  so  in- 
commensurate, so  remote  from  equality  in  human 
costs,  who  can  assign  a  principle  of  "fair"  division 
that  both  parties  will  accept?  Hence,  if  there  is 
a  paramount  necessity  of  cooperation,  that  neces- 
sity, within  the  present  economic  order,  creates, 
not  identity  of  interest,  but  the  equilibrium  of  op- 
posing forces.  Within  the  most  remarkable  sys- 
tem of  "cooperative"  production  the  world  has 
known,  a  dangerous  and  bitter  struggle  is  all  the 
time  being  waged. 

In  this  struggle,  labor  must  be  regarded  as  the 
offensive,  capital  as  the  defensive  force.  They 
have  been  organizing  for  the  conflict  their  re- 
spective sides,  but  capital  has  organized  to  defend 
a  position  already  taken,  labor  to  gain  what  it 
regards  as  territory  of  which  it  has  been  despoiled. 
Capital  would  be  glad  to  make  peace  on  the  basis 
of  the  status  quo,  labor  refuses  the  status  quo. 
Capital  upholds  the  existent  order,  the  prevailing 
law,  the  established  industrial  regime.  Labor  has 
been  challenging  it,  and  it  is  upon  that  challenge 
that  the  battle  is  being  joined. 

In  recent  years  the  challenge  has  been  grow- 


THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     33 

ing  more  insistent.  It  has  also  been  changing  its 
form.  A  century  ago  labor  was  fighting  for  the 
mere  right  to  organize,  fighting  almost  as  an  out- 
law in  society,  with  government  openly  on  the 
opposing  side.  A  century  ago,  in  Great  Britain, 
unions  of  workers  were  illegal,  and  in  America 
the  common  law  of  conspiracy  was  a  convenient 
engine  to  condemn  the  first  combinations  to  raise 
wages.  Out  of  a  thousand  confusions  the  issue 
has  now  emerged  clearer  and  sharper.  The 
separation  and  the  consolidation  of  opposing  in- 
terests are  more  complete.  And  to-day  labor 
feels  a  new  consciousness  of  power.  It  has  wid- 
ened its  claims,  its  horizon  is  no  longer  limited 
to  the  living  wage.  It  demands  a  share  in  pros- 
perity and  a  voice  in  the  control  of  industry. 
A  study  of  the  causes  of  strikes  reveals  a  signifi- 
cant change  in  recent  years.  In  the  early  days 
nearly  all  disputes  were  over  questions  of  wages 
or  of  hours.  It  was  taken  for  granted  by  both 
sides,  apart  from  a  few  "extremists,"  that  the 
general  regulation  of  the  conditions  of  work  was 
a  matter  which  pertained  to  the  employer  alone. 
The  business  was  his  business,  and  it  was  his  to 
decide.  But  the  attitude  of  labor  on  this  point 


34     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

has  been  changing.  For  reasons  which  will  be 
mentioned  later,  this  is  more  manifest  in  Europe 
than  in  America.  But  labor  in  America  is  likely, 
as  a  result  of  the  war,  to  be  more  influenced  than 
before  by  the  attitude  of  labor  in  other  countries. 
In  any  case  the  trend  of  industrial  evolution  is 
inevitably  in  this  direction.  In  America,  too,  the 
signs  of  the  times  are  being  displayed  to  all  who 
have  eyes  to  see.  For  example,  the  2ist  report 
of  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Labor  presents  an 
analysis  of  the  causes  of  strikes  and  lockouts  in 
the  period  1881-1905.  During  that  period  43 
per  cent  of  the  disputes  were  due  to  wages,  5.4 
per  cent  to  hours  of  work,  and  19  per  cent  to  ques- 
tions connected  with  the  recognition  of  the  union. 
But  this  last  cause  was  growing  more  important 
all  the  time,  until  by  1904  it  had  become  as  great 
a  source  of  disturbance  as  the  wage  question. 
Similarly,  in  Canada,  an  analysis  of  the  Report 
on  Strikes  and  Lockouts,  1901-16,  published  by 
the  Department  of  Labor,  reveals  the  fact  that  in 
disputes  concerning  wage  increases  the  average 
time-loss  through  strikes  per  employe  affected  was 
19  days,  in  those  concerning  hours  24  days,  but 
in  those  concerning  union-recognition  it  was  actu- 


THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     35 

ally  75  days.  The  disputes  on  this  ground  were 
therefore,  though  fewer  in  number,  much  more 
bitter.  This  is  very  significant.  It  is  also  very 
significant  that  the  most  difficult  "labor  troubles" 
which  the  U.  S.  Government  faced  during  the 
war,  for  example,  in  shipbuilding,  were  due  to 
the  demand  of  the  unions,  and  the  resistance  to 
that  demand,  for  recognition  and  a  share  in  con- 
trol. It  has  been  so  in  Great  Britain  also,  and 
the  British  Government,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  later 
chapter,  has  been  impelled  to  adopt  a  plan  whose 
uniqueness  in  the  history  of  industry  reveals  more 
clearly  than  anything  else  the  new  labor  situation. 
If  these  things  happened  in  the  green  tree  of 
abundant  employment  at  good  wages,  while  the 
great  stimulus  of  patriotism  reenforced  the  ordi- 
nary advantages  of  industrial  harmony,  what  shall 
be  done  now  in  the  dry,  in  the  time  of  transition 
and  the  loosening  of  bonds,  in  the  great  disturb- 
ance of  the  readjustment  to  normal  life,  when 
men's  thoughts  are  unsettled,  and  their  loyalties 
again  confused?  In  view  of  the  gravity  of  this 
situation  it  is  ostrich  foolishness  to  talk,  as  some 
still  talk,  of  the  essential  unity  of  the  interests  of 
capital  and  labor,  and  to  preach  mutual  good- 


36     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

will  as  if  that  alone  would  see  us  through.  The 
system  of  industry  must  be  readjusted  to  meet 
the  need.  The  system  is  being  attacked;  here 
as  elsewhere  reconstruction  is  demanded.  The 
foundations  of  common  interest  must  be  broad- 
ened before  the  fair  superstructure  of  goodwill 
can  be  securely  raised. 

The  war  has  destroyed  many  things ;  it  has  not 
destroyed,  but  rather  nourished,  the  roots  of  in- 
dustrial strife.  For  its  material  legacy  is  debt, 
a  vast  array  of  claims  on  future  production,  which 
will  increase  the  consciousness  of  power  in  the 
interest-receiving  class  and  increase  the  conscious- 
ness of  burden  in  the  wage-earning  class.  (This 
in  itself  is  a  potent  reason  for  the  cancellation  of 
the  war-debt,  by  the  most  rigorous  levies,  in  as 
short  a  period  as  possible.)  And  there  remain, 
not  abated  but  surely  intensified,  the  old  deep 
grievances  of  the  sheer  poverty  that  thwarts  and 
clogs  and  stunts  so  large  a  portion  of  the  people. 
There  is  still  that  insecurity  of  employment  which 
creates  in  men  a  haunting  dread  and  a  sense  of 
alienation,  well  justified  by  the  bitter  compulsory 
demoralization  of  the  out-of-work.  There  is, 
more  than  ever,  that  contrast  of  wealth  flaunting 


THE  CHANGING  ATTITUDE  OF  LABOR     37 

its  superfluities  and  poverty  stinted  of  its  barest 
needs  which  impels  not  only  the  victim  of  the 
latter  but  every  honest  man  to  ask,  "Is  it  inevit- 
able, is  it  just?" 

These  things  are  not  new,  but  the  world  has 
been  changing  in  other  ways.  The  age  of  the 
machine  has  taught  its  lessons.  By  making  men 
more  dependent  on  one  another  it  made  them 
more  equal  in  power — as  soon  as  they  realized 
what  interdependence  meant.  By  making  men 
masters  of  mechanism  it  gave  them  a  new  sense  of 
power,  so  that  they  have  come  to  regard  authority 
with  different  eyes,  and  to  question  the  tradition 
accepted  by  their  fathers.  By  bringing  the  ends 
of  the  earth  together,  while  it  has  built  the  paths 
of  commerce,  it  has  broken  the  grooves  of  cus- 
tom. Capital  found  undreamed-of  resources,  but 
labor  is  finding  undreamed-of  solidarity.  So  it 
was  before  the  great  war  came  to  shake  what  re- 
mained of  the  old  sense  of  stability. 

In  such  a  time  it  is  systems  and  not  men  that  are 
on  trial.  The  old  order  changes;  if  it  does  not 
yield  place  to  a  new  order  there  is  chaos.  We  so 
cling  to  the  old  order,  we  so  fear  the  unsettlement 
of  the  new,  that  were  the  choice  possible  we  would 


38     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

choose  to  stand  still — but  the  choice  is  no  longer 
possible.  The  demands  of  the  new  situation  can- 
not be  ignored;  they  must  be  faced,  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  whole. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR 

Is  labor  a  commodity?  Labor  is  not,  but  is  often 
treated  as  a  commodity.  The  heart  of  the  is- 
sue, labor  as  commodity  v.  labor  as  personal- 
ity. The  acceptance  of  the  latter  view  as  in- 
volving "economic  democracy."  Its  meaning 
and  necessity.  Economic  power  and  political 
power.  The  place  of  management  in  industry. 


WE  have  seen  that  the  attitude  of  labor  has 
been  changing,  that  its  leaders  demand  not  simply 
better  wages  and  shorter  hours,  not  simply  im- 
proved conditions  of  work,  not  merely  the  protec- 
tion against  stress  and  accident  which  might  be 
given  even  to  machines  when  they  become  pre- 
cious enough  to  their  owners — but  a  new  position 
in  industry,  a  new  industrial  order.  What  that 
means  I  must  now  try  to  make  explicit. 

In  a  word,  labor  is  demanding  release  from 
the  category  of  commodities.  This  is  a  demand 

of  tremendous  importance.     To  understand  it  we 

39 


40     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

must  enquire  into  the  meaning  of  that  ambiguous 
word  "commodity."  A  commodity  is  literally  a 
convenience,  something  whose  value  lies  in  the 
service  it  can  render  to  others,  in  the  use  which 
can  be  extracted  from  it,  in  its  sole  quality  as 
economic  means.  The  protest  of  labor,  writes 
the  brilliant  author  of  National  Guilds,  "only  be- 
comes reasonable  and  irresistible  when  the  work- 
ers consciously  base  their  claim  upon  the  funda- 
mental fact  that  to  sell  labor  as  a  commodity  is 
a  degradation;  that  to  reduce  the  untiring  efforts 
of  mankind  to  the  level  of  cotton  and  coal  is  a 
crime  and  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost.  ...  A 
commodity  is  something  that  has  exchange  value ; 
labor  is  priceless,  and,  therefore,  its  value  can- 
not be  expressed.  To  give  it  any  parity  with  cop- 
per or  timber  is  to  reduce  it  to  a  chattel — in  prac- 
tice, though  not  in  form,  to  chattel  slavery."  A 
commodity  is  value-for-others  only,  a  person  is  a 
value-for-himself.  A  commodity  is  something  at 
the  disposal  of  others,  and  thus  marketed  and 
marketable  simply  for  its  emonomic  qualities,  as 
a  machine  might  be,  as  a  slave — or  his  labor — 
used  to  be.  It  was  the  fact  that  his  labor  was  a 
commodity  which  made  the  man  a  slave. 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      41 

Now  when  the  question  is  raised,  Is  labor  a 
commodity  or  not?  the  answer  in  strictness  must 
be,  labor  is  not  a  commodity,  but  it  may  be  treated 
as  such.  A  man  may  be  worshiped  as  a  god, 
but  that  does  not  make  him  a  god.  A  man  may 
be  used  as  a  beast  of  burden,  but  that  does  not 
turn  him  into  a  beast  of  burden.  Nor  is  labor 
a  commodity  because  it  is  in  too  great  measure 
treated  as  one.  To  its  proper  owner,  to  the 
seller  of  labor,  it  never  is  a  commodity,  for  he 
knows  that  the  manner  of  its  use  or  disposal,  no 
less  than  the  price  of  it,  profoundly  affects  his 
well-being,  his  personality,  his  selfhood  and  social 
quality.  He  is  under  no  temptation  to  "give  it 
parity"  with  copper  or  timber.  Where  his  labor 
goes  he  must  go  too.  As  it  is  used,  so  is  he  used. 
It  is  not  a  separable  property  which  a  man  may 
sell  and  think  about  no  more.  It  is  the  capacity  of 
a  person,  which  can  never  be  summed  up  in  terms 
of  economic  value.  So  the  wage-earner,  as  he 
grows  conscious  of  the  meaning  of  labor,  does  all 
he  can  to  prevent  its  being  treated  as  a  commodity. 

Every  Factory  Act,  every  Workmen's  Compen- 
sation Act,  every  Industrial  Insurance  Act,  every 
Minimum  Wage  Act,  records  a  further  step  in 


42     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  social  recognition  of  the  truth  that  labor  is 
something  else  than  a  commodity.  But  the  logic 
which  justifies  these  has  a  far  wider  application. 
The  same  logic  which  forbids  these  obvious  sacri- 
fices of  producer  to  product,  which  forbids  that 
the  welfare  of  many  shall  in  that  direct  way  be 
sacrificed  to  the  wealth  of  few,  requires  the  final 
ordering  of  the  whole  system  of  production  to 
secure  first  the  welfare  of  those  who  produce. 

The  treatment  of  labor  as  commodity  was  one 
of  the  evils  which  sprang  from  the  separate  em- 
bodiment of  capital  and  labor  in  two  distinct 
classes,  as  the  result  of  the  great  industrial  pro- 
cess which  created  modern  capital  with  all  its 
dangerous  and  all  its  beneficent  powers.  This 
separation  led  the  buyer  of  labor  to  regard  it  as 
simply  one  cost  in  production,  to  be,  like  any  other 
cost,  reduced  to  the  minimum.  The  drive  of  the 
competitive  system  made  it  impossible  for  the 
average  employer  to  resist  this  tendency.  It  was 
not,  and  is  not,  his  fault,  but  the  inevitable  out- 
come of  the  system.  The  resistance,  however, 
had  to  come  mainly  from  the  side  of  labor,  and, 
after  long  suffering  from  its  effects,  labor  is  now 
attacking  the  system  whose  remorseless  wheels 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      43 

have  been  one  great  cause  of  its  woe.  It  attacks 
the  system  because  it  makes  labor  no  more  than 
a  means  to  be  bought  as  cheaply  as  possible,  a 
means  to  be  employed,  used  up,  driven,  cared  for, 
or  scrapped  according  to  its  productive  efficiency; 
because  it  values  the  raiment  produced  above  the 
body  that  produces  it,  and  profits  more  than  per- 
sons. In  spite  of  the  ameliorations  which  mod- 
ern industrial  legislation  has  brought,  the  com- 
modity-treatment of  labor  is  still  too  obvious. 

Here  in  fact  is  the  heart  of  the  present  issue, 
Is  labor  to  be  treated  as  a  commodity,  to  be  bought 
and  sold  like  any  other,  subject  to  the  vicissitudes 
of  a  mere  article  of  trade,  even  though  it  is,  as 
the  old  song  says,  the  buying  and  selling  of  the 
"lives  of  men"?  Or  is  labor  to  grow  into  an 
effective  partner  in  industry,  a  citizen  and  not 
merely  a  subject  within  that  kingdom?  For 
there,  we  must  realize,  is  the  alternative  to  the 
commodity-position.  No  mere  schemes  of  con- 
ciliation and  arbitration,  no  superficial  devices  of 
profit-sharing,  no  show  of  patriarchal  solicitude 
or  philanthropic  patronage,  will  heal  this  great 
and  growing  division.  Much  ingenuity  has  been 
spent  on  plans  of  arbitration  and  conciliation  in 


44    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

industry,  private  and  governmental,  compulsory 
or  voluntary,  with  such  intermediate  forms  as  the 
Canadian  "Lemieux  Act";  but  they  have  gener- 
ally disappointed  the  hopes  of  their  authors. 
The  sweep  of  the  conflict  has  been  but  little  af- 
fected, but  little  diverted,  by  these  inadequate 
breakwaters.  The  most  ambitious  of  them,  com- 
pulsory arbitration,  supported  by  Government, 
is  now  as  a  normal  method  almost  universally 
condemned.  Certain  forms  of  conciliation  have 
received  a  greater  but  still  very  partial  acceptance. 
For  all  these  plans  are  remedial  by  intention,  not 
preventive.  They  assume  on  the  whole  the  exist- 
ing order,  and  they  assume  a  code  of  industrial 
justice  which  does  not  yet  exist.  Their  success 
would  prevent  the  creation  of  the  new  order  for 
which  the  more  enlightened  part  of  labor  is  striv- 
ing; their  failure  is  the  best  proof  that  a  new 
order  is  required.  And  it  is  instructive  that  in 
general  those  conciliation  schemes  have  worked 
best  which  have  not  been  mere  temporary  devices 
to  end  disputes  which  had  arisen,  but  methods  for 
bringing  the  management  and  the  workers  more 
continuously  together  in  consultation. 

The  most  successful  conciliation  schemes,  such 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      45 

as  the  remarkable  instances  in  the  Women's  Cloth- 
ing Industries  of  New  York  City,  have  generally 
been  part  of  a  wider  scheme  of  organization. 
And  when  they  have  broken  down,  as  in  part  in 
the  above  mentioned  case  and  as,  notably,  in  the 
famous  case  of  the  Brooklands  agreement  in  the 
Lancashire  cotton  industry,  it  is  because  labor 
demanded  a  greater  share  of  control  than  capital 
was  willing  to  yield. 

This  points  the  direction  towards  which  indus- 
try must  move.  Whatever  else  may  be  neces- 
sary it  is  clear  that  in  the  present  temper  of  labor 
there  is  not  the  slightest  hope  of  permanent  suc- 
cess attaching  to  any  plan  which  does  not  bring 
management  and  workers  to  one  council  table, 
not  merely  when  disputes  have  already  arisen, 
but  continuously  concerning  all  those  matters  from 
which  disputes  arise.  Anything  short  of  that 
leaves  labor  still  in  the  position  of  a  commodity 
— save  that,  unlike  all  proper  commodities,  labor 
resents  the  character  so  bestowed  and  proves  its 
inappropriateness  by  endless  insurrection  and  un- 
rest. To  its  seller,  the  wage-earner,  labor  always 
has  meant,  must  mean,  personality — life  and  the 
conditions  of  living;  to  its  buyer,  the  employer, 


46     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

it  has  meant,  under  the  drive  of  the  competitive 
system  and  the  pursuit  of  profits,  only  one  raw 
material  of  production.  It  was  inevitable  that  the 
wage-earner  should  come  to  insist,  as  soon  as  he 
felt  the  power  to  do  so,  on  his  being  regarded 
from  the  former  point  of  view.  It  is  inevitable 
that,  if  his  power  and  his  enlightenment  grow, 
he  will  insist  upon  it  more  and  more. 

Right  down  to  the  roots  of  the  present  discon- 
tents the  distinction  between  labor  as  commodity 
and  labor  as  personality  pierces.  It  is  the  claim 
of  labor  as  personality  which  raises  the  issue  above 
mere  class  selfishness  and  places  it  on  the  broad 
ground  of  social  welfare.  It  is  in  the  light  of 
that  claim  that  the  solution  must  be  sought  and 
found. 

II 

Most  of  us  are  willing  enough  to  do  lip-service 
to  the  creed  that  labor  is  not,  and  should  not  be 
treated  as,  a  commodity.  Is  it  not,  for  example, 
now  written  in  the  law  of  the  United  States  "that 
the  labor  of  a  human  being  is  not  a  commodity 
or  article  of  commerce"?  But  few  realize  how 
far  that  simple  admission  carries.  For  there  is 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      4? 

but  one  alternative  to  being  treated  as  a  com- 
modity, which  is  being  treated  as  a  person.  And 
being  treated  as  a  person  means  being  treated  as 
one  possessed  of  mind  and  will,  capable  of  being 
educated,  capable  of  being  appealed  to,  capable 
of  being  self-directed — with  a  thousand  other 
capacities  of  which,  for  this  purpose,  the  most  im- 
portant is  that  he  works  for  the  sake  of  living 
(and  as  a  part  of  living)  and  does  not  live  for 
the  sake  of  working.  In  a  word,  the  denial  of  the 
labor-commodity  principle  is  meaningless  or  else 
it  is  the  affirmation  of  the  principle  of  "economic 
democracy." 

"Economic  democracy" — the  new  phrase,  the 
new  demand,  has  to  many  a  sinister,  to  others  an 
inspiring  sound.  There  are  many  who  proclaim 
their  faith  in  political  democracy  but  stir  uneasily 
when  for  "political"  the  adjective  "economic"  is 
substituted.  The  portentous  word  "Bolshevism" 
rises  to  the  lips.  They  conjure  up  the  picture 
of  business  taken  over  by  a  mob  of  workmen, 
without  knowledge,  without  subordination,  with- 
out responsibility — or  else  run,  with  equal  ineffici- 
ency to  a  like  disastrous  end,  by  popularly  elected 
governments.  If  that  were  indeed  the  transla- 


48     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

tion  of  "economic  democracy"  the  condemnation 
would  be  just.  Such  experiments  as  have  been 
made  in  that  form  of  economic  "self-government" 
have  nearly  all  ended  in  shipwreck.  But  is  that 
the  meaning  of  the  demand?  It  is  too  wide- 
spread, too  vehement,  to  be  evaded.  It  is  too  im- 
portant to  be  misunderstood.  Misunderstanding 
creates  dangers  where  they  did  not  exist  before, 
whereas  understanding  may  remove  the  dangers 
that  exist. 

The  real  demand  of  the  worker  is  simple  and 
unequivocal,  however  hard  the  translation  into 
practice  may  prove.  He  is  rebelling  against  the 
status  of  mere  servant,  as  every  intelligent  being 
does  in  his  heart.  If  there  is  any  authority  in 
the  command,  to  do  as  we  would  be  done  by,  it 
condemns  the  flat  denial  of  this  demand.  For  it 
is  only  those  who  possess  this  liberty  who  think 
that  others  should  not  have  or  share  it. 

The  growing  need  of  the  situation  cannot  be 
better  stated  than  in  a  passage  from  the  Report 
of  the  Commission  appointed  in  1917  to  inquire 
into  the  causes  of  industrial  unrest  in  Great 
Britain.  This  Commission  was  divided  into  eight 
sections,  each  assigned  to  one  section  of  the  coun- 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      49 

try.  The  eight  reports  are  of  one  accord  in  their 
recommendations,  but  the  fullest  and  perhaps  the 
most  interesting,  was  that  of  Division  No.  7,  pre- 
sided over  by  Mr.  D.  L.  Thomas,  Chairman  of 
the  Workers'  Educational  Association  of  Wales. 
It  contains  the  following:  "We  have  repeatedly 
referred  to  the  spirit  of  antagonism  that  has 
sprung  up — the  hostility  to  capitalism  and  the 
employing  class  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  too  prev- 
alent hostility  to  trade-unionism  on  the  other.  .  .  . 
A  new  spirit  of  partnership  is  therefore  essential. 
The  precise  mechanism  of  that  partnership,  es- 
pecially its  details,  can  be  left  to  be  invented  and 
developed  at  a  later  stage  under  the  influence  of 
the  new  spirit.  It  must  be  a  growth  from  within, 
not  something  imposed  from  without,  and  it  will 
doubtless  take  different  forms  in  different  indus- 
tries and  possibly  in  different  localities  also.  But 
there  should  be  a  clear  perception  at  the  start  of 
at  least  the  leading  principles  on  which  that  part- 
nership or  cooperation  of  the  parties  engaged 
in  industry  is  to  be  based. 

"Two  such  principles,  if  we  may  so  call  them, 
appear  to  us  to  be  fundamental: 

"(a)   That  the  present  system  should  be  modi- 


50 

fied  in  such  a  way  as  to  identify  the  worker  more 
closely  with  the  control  of  the  industry  in  which 
he  is  engaged. 

"(b)  That  every  employe  should  be  guaran- 
teed what  we  may  call  'security  of  tenure' ;  that  is, 
that  no  workman  should  be  liable  to  be  dismissed 
except  with  the  consent  of  his  fellow-workmen  as 
well  as  his  employer. 

"The  frank  acceptance  of  these  two  princi- 
ples would,  we  believe,  constitute  such  a  recogni- 
tion of  the  personality  of  the  worker  as  would 
instantly  appeal  to  the  better  and  nobler  side  of 
his  nature,  and  would  furnish  a  strong  and  steady 
stimulus  to  the  development  of  a  sense  of  responsi- 
bility within  him.  It  would  tend  to  remove  the 
impression  which  so  widely  prevails  in  the  ranks 
of  labor  that  to  the  ordinary  employer,  labor  is 
but  a  commodity  to  be  bought  cheap  in  the  same 
way  as  its  output  is  to  be  sold  dear." 

The  "economic  democracy"  set  forth  in  these 
statesmanlike  words  is  neither  bogey  nor  idle 
dream.  It  represents  the  ever-growing,  ever 
more  vocal  demand,  not  only  of  labor,  but  of  all 
who,  impressed  with  the  social  and  economic 
wastefulness  of  the  industrial  system  in  the  pres- 


ent,  impressed  with  the  ominous  possibilities  of 
its  continuance  in  the  stranger  future  that  is  dawn- 
ing, are  seeking  with  resolute  hope  a  better  order 
of  things. 

But  it  stands  in  sheer  contrast  to  the  common 
reality  of  economic  autocracy,  which  is  nowhere 
more  flagrant  or  assertive  than  in  America.  To 
anyone  who  is  at  all  familiar  with  industrial  con- 
ditions this  needs  no  proof,  but  it  may  be  well  to 
quote  the  striking  admission  of  it  contained  in  the 
recent  Report  of  the  President's  Mediation  Com- 
mission: 

"While  not  expressed  in  so  many  words,"  says 
the  Commission,  speaking  specifically  of  the  con- 
ditions in  the  Arizona  mining  district,  "the  domi- 
nant feeling  of  protest  was  that  the  industry  was 
conducted  upon  an  autocratic  basis.  The  workers 
did  not  have  representation  in  determining  those 
conditions  of  their  employment  which  vitally  af- 
fected their  lives  as  well  as  the  company's  out- 
put. Many  complaints  were,  in  fact,  found  by 
the  Commission  to  be  unfounded,  but  there  was 
no  safeguard  against  injustice  except  the  say-so 
of  one  side  of  the  controversy.  In  none  of  the 
mines  were  there  direct  dealings  between  com- 


52     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

panics  and  unions.  In  some  mines  grievance  com- 
mittees had  been  recently  established,  but  they 
were  distrusted  by  the  workers  as  subject  to  com- 
pany control,  and,  in  any  event,  were  not  effective, 
because  the  final  determination  of  every  issue  was 
left  with  the  company.  In  place  of  orderly  pro- 
cesses of  adjustment,  workers  were  given  the 
alternative  of  submission  or  strike.  .  .  . 

"The  men  demanded  the  removal  of  certain 
existing  grievances  as  to  wages,  hours,  and  work- 
ing conditions,  but  the  specific  grievances  were, 
on  the  whole,  of  relatively  minor  importance. 
The  crux  of  the  conflict  was  the  insistence  of  the 
men  that  the  right  and  the  power  to  obtain  just 
treatment  were  in  themselves  basic  conditions  of 
employment,  and  that  they  should  not  be  compelled 
to  depend  for  such  just  treatment  on  the  benevo- 
lence or  uncontrolled  will  of  the  employers." 

Point  is  given  to  these  remarks  by  the  further 
statement  of  the  Commission  that,  in  a  time  of 
special  urgency,  one  hundred  million  pounds  of 
copper  were  lost  in  the  Arizona  producing  region 
through  wide-spread  strikes  lasting  over  three 
months. 

The  present  system  is  in  its  very  nature  an  au- 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR       53 

tocracy.  Those  who  own  determine  essentially 
the  lot  of  those  who  work,  for  the  management 
represents  the  interest  of  those  who  own.  It 
is  in  that  interest  that  wage-rates  are  fixed  and, 
beyond  certain  minimal  determinations,  the  con- 
ditions of  work  appointed.  Certain  rates,  by 
piece  or  time,  are  offered.  The  wage-earner  can- 
not judge  their  "fairness,"  for  he  is  ignorant  of 
the  complex  machinery  of  production,  in  particu- 
lar of  the  relation  of  costs,  of  which  his  labor  is 
counted  part,  to  returns.  He  has  no  opportu- 
nity to  learn.  He  lacks  education  and  often  leis- 
ure. Above  all,  his  representatives  cannot  enter 
the  council  chamber  where  policy  is  determined. 
Yet  that  policy  concerns  him  vitally,  for  on  it 
may  depend  his  standard  of  living,  his  chance  of 
employment,  his  safety  from,  or  subjection  to  that 
excessive  driving  which  wears  out  life.  When 
new  methods  and  processes  are  introduced  and 
the  wage-rates  altered,  he  cannot  estimate  the 
"fairness"  of  the  change.  The  great  majority  of 
employers  believe,  very  often  with  truth,  that 
their  primary  object  in  business,  the  making  of 
profits,  is  furthered  by  low  wage-rates.  Is  it  not 
inevitable,  if  the  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of 


54    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

production  is  exclusively  theirs  and  the  control 
over  these  conditions  is  vested  in  them  alone,  that 
employers  are  subject  to  constant  temptation  to  ex- 
ploit labor,  and  workers  subject  to  constant  dep- 
rivation of  what,  on  any  theory  of  distribution, 
can  be  regarded  as  a  "fair"  return  for  their  labor? 
On  the  other  hand  when  labor  is  strong  enough  to 
exact  its  own  terms,  it  feels,  under  these  condi- 
tions, no  responsibility  to  accommodate  these  to 
the  welfare  of  the  industry.  Hence  endless  fric- 
tion and  harassment,  leading  towards  a  ruinous 
impasse. 

Initiative,  the  condition  of  progress,  and  au- 
thority, the  condition  of  order,  must  be  secured 
under  any  system,  democratic  or  autocratic.  The 
analogy  of  political  democracy  holds  perfectly 
here.  Men  shuddered  at  the  chaos  which  would 
spring  from  the  granting  to  all  men  of  the  ele- 
mentary rights  of  political  citizenship — but  in 
truth  chaos  sprang  instead  from  the  withholding 
of  these.  Imperfect  as  such  democracy  has  been, 
it  has  not  been  the  scramble  of  mob-rule  nor  yet 
the  "cult  of  incompetence."  (Was  incompetence 
ever  more  cultivated  than  in  the  Russian  autoc- 
racy? Competence  depends  on  the  general 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      55 

standard  of  intelligence  rather  than  the  form  of 
government.)  For  all  its  incompleteness  democ- 
racy has  not  lacked  direction  or  power.  And  no 
sword  of  Damocles  is  suspended  over  its  head. 

As  in  the  political,  so  in  the  economic  sphere, 
it  is  true  that  no  permanent  social  relationships 
can  be  built  on  servitude,  on  anything  finally  save 
the  cooperation  of  willing  partners — not  equal 
partnership,  for  men  differ  in  capacity  and  there- 
fore must  differ  in  authority,  but  such  partnership 
as  will  allow  to  all  the  choice,  in  due  relation  to 
others,  of  the  disposal  and  direction  of  whatever 
powers  they  possess.  This  will  come  in  the  end, 
for  there  is  always  something  resistless  in  the  con- 
scious demand  of  any  majority  of  men.  It  has 
proved  so  in  respect  of  political  government, 
though  the  world  has  passed,  to  learn  it,  through 
centuries  of  confusion  and  bloody  strife.  Must 
it  be  so  in  industry  also,  or  do  men  learn  only 
from  the  suffering  imposed  by  blind  resistance? 

Uncontrolled  or  irresponsible  power  is  the  grav- 
est danger  of  organized  society.  It  is  an  inher- 
ent weakness  of  human  nature  everywhere  that 
uncontrolled  power  over  others  breeds  wanton 
upliftedness,  the  hubris  with  whose  dire  conse- 


56     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

quences  the  ancient  Greeks  were  so  mightily  im- 
pressed. As  surely  as  children  are  spoiled  by 
deference,  so  are  men  by  power  for  the  use  of 
which  they  need  render  no  account.  It  is  a  fail- 
ing even  more  conspicuous  in  those  who  have 
themselves  risen  to  such  power  from  an  inferior 
station,  in  the  "self-made"  man  who  has  left  the 
ranks  of  labor,  in  the  foreman  who  has  been 
chosen  to  petty  autocracy  over  his  fellows.  Not 
infrequently  the  latter,  uneducated  both  generally 
and  in  respect  to  the  responsibilities  of  his  particu- 
lar office, 

"Dress'd  in  a  little  brief  authority, 
Plays  such  fantastic  tricks," 

as  breed  resentment  and  smoldering  rebellion. 
With  his  brusque  commands,  his  scorn  of  eluci- 
dations, and  his  constant  threat  of  "firing,"  such 
a  man  becomes  to  the  worker  the  concrete  embodi- 
ment of  the  oppression  he  calls  "capitalism." 
That  men's  livelihood  should  be,  without  appeal, 
at  the  mercy  of  the  "choleric  word"  of  such  a 
tyrant  reveals  an  autocratic  condition  of  industry 
beyond  justification  to-day.  It  is  always  danger- 
ous when  men  hold  irresponsible  power  over  their 


THE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      57 

fellows,  whether  to  make  their  laws  or  to  domi- 
nate their  working  lives.  These  are  times  when 
there  is  surely  no  need  to  insist  upon  that  simple 
and  terribly  demonstrated  truth.  "Economic  de- 
mocracy," in  the  sense  above  explained,  is  an  in- 
evitable concomitant  or  part  of  that  political  de- 
mocracy which,  whatever  its  difficulties  and  imper- 
fections, seems  the  only  way  out  of  the  blood- 
stained wilderness  into  which  power  divorced  from 
responsibility  has  led  the  world. 

Men  are  coming  to  realize  the  dependence  of 
political  power  on  economic  power.  At  one  time 
they  regarded  the  vote  as  the  key  to  the  economic 
situation,  and  the  extension  of  political  democracy 
was  fervently  advocated  and  bitterly  opposed  on 
that  account.  But  neither  the  hopes  nor  the  fears 
aroused  by  the  principle  of  political  democracy 
have  been  fulfilled  by  its  performance.  The 
wage-earner  got  the  vote,  but  when  secured  it 
lost  its  magic.  He  felt  no  better  off  than  before. 
The  right  to  vote  became  a  futility  to  the  man  who 
could  not  thereby  establish  the  right  to  a  living 
wage,  even  the  right  to  work.  Consequently 
there  was  growing  up  before  the  war,  among 
certain  leaders  of  la'bor,  a  deep  disappointment 


58     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

with  the  methods  and  results  of  ordinary  politics. 
One  English  labor  daily  constantly  spoke  of  the 
House  of  Commons  as  the  House  of  Pretense. 
There  was  growing  a  conviction  that  salvation 
must  come,  not  from  the  presence  of  labor  in  the 
councils  of  the  State,  but  more  from  its  presence 
in  the  councils  of  industry.  It  was  coming  to  be 
felt  that  economic  power  dominated  political 
power,  rather  than  vice-versa;  that  those  who  con- 
trolled finance  and  commerce  and  manufacture  in- 
evitably controlled  the  State  also.  In  France, 
always  prone  to  extremes  of  doctrine,  this  feeling 
resulted  in  syndicalism.  But  syndicalism  combines 
two  principles  which  have  no  necessary  relation. 
It  is  at  once  a  theory  of  industrial  government 
and  a  program  for  its  attainment.  The  theory 
might  be  sound,  wholly  or  in  part,  even  though 
the  program  stood  condemned.  And  in  fact  the 
program  revealed,  by  contrast,  the  very  necessity 
of  political  action.  For  the  only  alternative  syn- 
dicalism could  offer,  in  its  reaction  from  politics, 
was  direct  action  by  the  "syndicates"  or  unions 
of  workers,  the  seizure  of  economic  control 
through  sabotage,  violence,  and  the  general  strike. 
This  is  destructive  anarchy,  not  constructive 


59 

democracy.  But  a  saner  form  of  the  doctrine 
has  been  spreading  in  other  lands.  It  is  evidenced 
by  the  decline  of  the  older  type  of  State-socialism. 
The  simpler  socialism  which  wanted  everything 
controlled  from  a  single  governing  center  in  the 
State,  which  would  "nationalize"  everything  and 
give  a  national  government  direct  and  complete 
control  over  it  all,  has  lost  its  glamor.  Central- 
ization under  government  has  revealed  its  dangers, 
and  experience  of  nationalization  has  not  been 
such  as  to  make  labor  desire  its  indefinite  exten- 
sion over  industry.  Labor  would  apply  the  prin- 
ciple of  nationalization  further  than  it  now  ex- 
tends, to  industries  like  transportation  and  min- 
ing which  are  the  basis  of  all  others;  but  even 
there  it  is  beginning  to  demand  decentralization 
and  joint  control  as  the  necessary  complement  of 
the  process.  A  growing  minority  accept  the  doc- 
trine of  the  "guildsmen,"  that  State-socialism,  as 
formerly  advocated,  is  but  guaranteed  capitalism, 
and  "nationalization,"  as  formerly  understood, 
but  the  ultimate  policy  of  endangered  capitalism, 
the  "capitalist's  last  card." 

The  same  tendency  to  demand  not  State  control 
but  a  direct  share  in  industrial  direction  is  evi- 


60     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

denced  in  more  concrete  ways.  It  is  evidenced 
by  the  growing  insistence  of  the  unions  on  recogni- 
tion. It  is  evidenced  by  the  breakdown  of  many 
promising  schemes  for  industrial  peace  which  made 
no  provision  for  labor's  sharing  in  the  direct  con- 
trol of  its  working  conditions.  Particularly  in 
England,  always  in  the  van  of  industrial  evolu- 
tion, is  it  growing  too  clear  for  misinterpretation. 
It  is  evidenced  by  the  growth  of  industrial  as 
distinct  from  craft  unionism.  It  is  evidenced  by 
the  growth  of  the  "shop-stewards'  movement," 
particularly  in  the  machinists'  trades.  The  sig- 
nificance of  the  shop-steward,  who  from  being  a 
mere  collector  of  trade  union  dues  in  the  shop 
has  come  to  challenge  the  old-line  leaders,  is  that 
he  represents  industrial  as  distinct  from  craft 
unionism.  This  is  a  difference  not  merely  of 
structure  but  of  ideal.  Under  the  old  craft  union- 
ism a  dozen  different  organizations  might  control 
the  workers  in  a  single  plant,  whereas  under  in- 
dustrial unionism  the  workshop  is  itself  the  unit 
of  organization.  It  is  obvious  that  the  latter 
type  is  much  more  in  harmony  with  the  principle 
of  direct  control.  Again  it  is  evidenced  by  the 
institution  of  "works  committees,"  as  a  representa- 


live  agency  for  bringing  workers  and  management 
together.  It  is  noteworthy  that  a  number  of 
large  English  employers,  such  as  Hans  Renold, 
Ltd.,  Barr  and  Stroud,  Rowntree,  and  others, 
have  welcomed  these  committees  and  regard  them 
as  a  great  aid  both  to  production  and  to  harmony. 
Finally,  it  is  evidenced  by  the  reception  accorded 
to  the  Whitley  Report  and  its  adoption  by  the 
British  Government,  of  which  more  anon. 

Because  the  world  has  changed  the  place  of 
labor  must  also  change.  It  is  not  generally  re- 
alized that  the  conditions  of  modern  industry  make 
it  necessary  that  the  worker  should  find  a  new 
source  of  interest  in  his  working  life.  The  days 
of  the  craft  are  gone,  and  with  them  the  old  spirit 
of  craftsmanship  and  the  particular  satisfaction 
it  afforded.  The  individual  worker  can  no  longer 
as  a  rule  look  upon  the  finished  product  as  the 
child  of  his  hands.  His  individuality  is  not  re- 
vealed to  him  in  the  product,  one  of  whose  thou- 
sand mechanical  processes  he  has  controlled.  He 
has  lost  that  specific  interest  forever.  A  new 
interest  has  become  necessary,  correspondent  to 
his  new  function.  Just  as  general  skill  is  in  the 
machine  age  taking  the  place  of  specific  skill,  so 


62     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

must  a  general  interest  be  found  to  take  the  place 
of  the  lost  specific  interest.  This  can  be  found 
only  in  the  sense  of  the  worker  that  he  is  an  ac- 
tive participant  and  partner  in  the  whole  process 
of  production  within  which  his  own  work  falls. 

Where  would  this  process  of  industrial  "de- 
mocratization" end?  No  man  can  tell.  In  hu- 
man affairs  only  the  next  step  ahead  is  clear,  and 
that  is  clear  only  because  it  is  necessary.  One 
immediate  consequence,  however,  would  seem  to 
be  that  in  this  development  management  must 
grow  into  a  separate  industrial  function,  becom- 
ing management  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term, 
the  function  of  securing  the  most  efficient  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  end,  of  productive  power  to  prod- 
uct. The  proper  function  of  management,  as  Mr. 
Webb  points  out  in  The  Works  Manager  of  To- 
day, is  the  reduction  of  the  net  cost  of  produc- 
tion. This  net  cost,  however,  cannot  be  estimated 
aright  unless  we  recognize  the  worker  as  in  some 
sense  a  partner,  one  for  whose  sake  production 
is  taking  place.  To  reduce  costs  at  his  cost  is  not 
the  function  of  management,  nor  would  it  ever 
seem  to  be  such  if  labor  were  represented  in  the 


JHE  MODERN  CLAIMS  OF  LABOR      63 

direction  of  industry  as  well  as  capital.  Manage- 
ment would  then  appear  in  its  true  light,  and  be 
relieved  from  the  distractions  and  the  embarrass- 
ments inspired  by  its  dependence  on  capital  alone. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  WIDENING  OF  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR 

The  conflict  in  the  ranks  of  labor.  Wage-earner 
or  •producer — which  does  "labor"  signify? 
Leon  Tro.tzky  and  Arthur  Henderson.  Ca- 
tastrophic or  progressive  revolution?  The 
soil  of  catastrophic  revolution.  American 
labor's  apathy  to  the  broader  questions  of 
policy.  The  advance  of  the  British  Labor 
Party. 

THERE  is  an  internal  conflict  proceeding  in  the 
van  of  the  labor  movement  whose  issue  will  have 
momentous  consequences  not  only  on  the  direction 
of  that  movement  but  also  on  the  character  of  our 
whole  social  structure.  It  springs  from  the  funda- 
mental question,  What  is  Labor?  Whom  shall 
it  include  ?  Two  opposing  views  are  vehemently 
advocated.  The  one  party  would  limit  the  idea 
of  "labor"  to  the  class  of  wage-earners,  exclud- 
ing the  "brain-workers,"  the  administrators  of  in- 
dustry, the  technicians,  the  professional  workers 

of  all  kinds.     To  this  party  all  these  are  but  the 

64 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       65 

instruments,  conscious  or  unconscious,  of  its  enemy, 
capitalism.  On  the  other  hand  there  is  a  party 
which  would  extend  the  idea  of  labor  to  include 
all  who  in  any  real  sense  can  be  called  workers 
or  producers,  whether  they  work  with  brains  or 
hands  (though  that  is  a  poor  enough  distinction, 
since  nobody  works  with  brain  alone  or  hand 
alone),  whether  they  sit  at  desks  or  toil  in  fields 
or  factories,  whether  they  wear  fine  linen  or  over- 
alls. With  either  view  goes  a  corresponding 
policy.  The  former  party  rejects  all  compro- 
mises, detests  all  devices  for  "industrial  harmony" 
as  props  of  a  vicious  system,  dulling  in  the  worker 
the  sense  of  its  iniquity,  and  proclaims  the  revo- 
lution. The  latter  party  would  emulate  the  tide 
and  not  the  storm,  advancing  foot  by  foot,  gaining 
ground  wherever  opportunity  is  given,  and  accept- 
ing the  orderly  agencies  of  social  and  industrial 
change,  the  law-making  power,  the  taxing  power, 
the  bargaining  power  of  organized  labor,  as  the 
means  whereby  its  aims  shall  be  achieved.  It 
shuns  the  counsels  of  violence,  its  most  forward 
minds  perceiving  how  insecure,  how  uncontrol- 
lable, how  subject  to  reaction  and  counter-over- 
throw, are  the  results  of  social  convulsion.  The 


66     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

goal  may  be  revolution  none  the  less,  but  revolu- 
tion progressively  and  not  catastrophically  to  be 
attained. 

The  following  statements,  explanatory  of  the  at- 
titude of  two  great  protagonists  of  these  opposing 
doctrines,  may  suffice  to  suggest  the  supreme  im- 
portance of  this  issue. 

Leon  Trotzky,  in  his  striking  manifesto  on 
"The  Bolsheviki  and  World-Peace,"  looks  to  a 
great  after-war  proletarian  uprising.  "Even 
though  the  vanguard,"  he  says,  "of  the  working 
class  knew  in  theory  that  Might  is  the  mother  of 
Right,  still  their  political  thinking  was  completely 
permeated  by  the  spirit  of  opportunism,  of  adap- 
tation to  bourgeois  legalism.  Now  they  are  learn- 
ing from  the  teachings  of  facts  to  despise  this 
legalism  and  tear  it  down.  .  .  .  The  possessing 
classes,  to  their  consternation,  will  soon  have  to 
recognize  this  change.  A  working  class  that  has 
been  through  the  school  of  war  will  feel  the  need 
of  using  the  language  of  force  as  soon  as  the  first 
serious  obstacle  faces  them  within  their  own  coun- 
try. 'Necessity  knows  no  law,'  the  workers  will 
cry  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  hold  them  back 
at  the  command  of  the  bourgeois  law.  And  pov- 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       67 

erty,  the  terrible  poverty  that  pervails  during  this 
war  and  will  continue  after  its  close,  will  be  of  a 
sort  to  force  the  masses  to  violate  many  a  bour- 
geois law.  .  .  .  This  must  lead  to  profound  po- 
litical conflicts,  which,  ever-widening  and  deepen- 
ing, may  take  on  the  character  of  a  social  revolu- 
tion, the  course  and  outcome  of  which  no  one,  of 
course,  can  now  foresee."  For  his  own  country, 
and  with  his  own  aid,  it  did  not  require  the  end 
of  the  war  to  bring  fulfillment  to  that  menacing 
prophecy. 

Arthur  Henderson,  whose  understanding  of  the 
necessities  of  the  Russian  situation,  as  it  existed 
in  the  summer  of  1917,  led  to  his  resignation  from 
the  British  cabinet  soon  afterwards,  as  leader  of 
the  British  Labor  Party,  issued  a  pronouncement 
of  a  very  different  kind.  In  an  article  on  "The 
Outlook  for  Labor"  he  put  forward  the  new  doc- 
trine of  his  party  on  this  subject.  "No  one,"  he 
says,  "who  is  engaged  in  productive  work,  whether 
of  hand  or  brain,  will  be  excluded  from  the  new 
comradeship  which  we  are  organizing;  and  as  for 
the  non-productive  classes,  we  hardly  expect  that 
any  number  of  them  will  want  to  join  a  party 
movement  which  seeks  to  make  their  parasitical 


68     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

existence  impossible.  The  Labor  Party,  in  short, 
is  the  party  of  the  producers — of  the  workers,  in 
the  widest  sense  of  that  noble  word:  of  all  the 
people,  without  distinction  of  class  or  sex,  who 
labor  to  enrich  the  community."  Inevitably,  a 
party  so  interpreting  the  scope  of  labor  rejects 
the  facile  theory  of  blind  revolution,  and  projects 
a  program  of  reconstruction,  drastic  but  attain- 
able only  by  orderly  process,  by  appeal  and  educa- 
tion, by  the  winning  of  a  voting  majority,  and 
thus  by  the  seizure  of  the  constitutional  machinery 
of  change. 

When  the  alternative  is  offered,  nearly  all  men 
prefer  peaceful  to  violent  ways.  The  long-suf- 
fering of  men  is  far  more  remarkable  than  their 
rebelliousness.  It  is  only  when  despair  seizes 
their  hearts,  when  oppression  reveals  them  im- 
potent or  destitution  renders  them  reckless,  when, 
in  truth,  they  "have  nothing  to  lose  but  their 
chains,"  that  they  surrender  to  the  gospel  of  vio- 
lence. All  the  catastrophic  creeds  of  insurrec- 
tionary labor,  Marxism,  syndicalism,  Bolshevism, 
I.  W.  W.ism,  are  reactions  from  intolerable  condi- 
tions. Thus  the  revolutionary  syndicalism  of  the 
first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century  was  born  out 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       69 

of  the  traditional  weakness  of  French  trade- 
unionism  and  the  traditional  repressiveness  of  the 
French  Government,  illuminated,  for  example,  by 
such  experiences  as  the  suppression  of  the  school- 
teachers' union  and  the  breaking  of  the  great  rail- 
way strike  by  the  perilously  dramatic  coup  of  an 
ex-socialist  premier  who  called  the  strikers  to  the 
colors.  Bolshevism  was  made  possible — and 
necessary — by  outrageous  tyranny,  incurable  cor- 
ruption, and  infinite  misery.  I.  W.  W.ism  re- 
flects the  resolution  of  despair  which  animates, 
under  the  harrow  of  ruthless  exploitation,  certain 
portions  of  American  unskilled  labor.  It  springs 
up  where  unionism  is  most  helpless,  among  aliens 
and  homeless  migrants,  among  miserably  paid 
mill-hands  and  railway  laborers  who  see — how 
can  they? — no  other  means  of  escape  from  the 
darkness  of  the  pit  which  our  society  has  digged 
for  them.  This  is  the  judgment  of  such  able 
investigators  as  the  late  Professor  Carleton  W. 
Parker  and  the  members  of  the  President's  Media- 
tion Commission  whose  report  has  already  been 
cited.  For  all  so  situated  the  idea  of  labor  is,  of 
necessity,  narrowed  until  it  applies  only  to  the 
"proletarian,"  to  the  "wage-victim."  Thus  nar- 


70    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

rowed,  it  stimulates  a  program  of  catastrophic 
overthrow,  for  what  other  way  is  open  to  a  group 
so  bereft  of  status,  so  poor  in  resources,  and  so 
completely  cut  off  from  all  the  springs  of  power? 

Some  of  those  who  are  loudest  in  their  condem- 
nation of  labor  insurrection  are  themselves  most 
responsible  for  its  growth,  by  blocking  the  legiti- 
mate avenues  of  union  activity.  Thus  the  Presi- 
dent's Mediation  Commission  says:  "This  un- 
compromising attitude  on  the  part  of  employers 
has  reaped  for  them  an  organization  of  destruc- 
tive rather  than  constructive  radicalism.  The 
I.  W.  W.  is  filling  the  vacuum  created  by  the 
operators.  The  red  card  is  carried  by  large  num- 
bers throughout  the  Pacific  Northwest.  Efforts 
to  rectify  evils  through  the  trade-union  movement 
have  largely  failed  because  of  the  small  headway 
trade  unions  are  able  to  make.  Operators  claim 
that  the  nature  of  the  industry  presents  inherent 
obstacles  to  unionization.  But  a  dominant  reason 
is  to  be  found  in  the  bitter  attitude  of  the  oper- 
ators towards  any  organization  among  their  em- 
ployes." 

Here  we  have  merely  one  manifestation  of  that 
age-old  phenomenon,the  spirit  of  humanity  revolt- 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       71 

ing  against  servitude  to  man.  The  attempt  to 
crush  these  movements  by  frontal  attack,  by  de- 
nunciation, by  imprisonment  and  fine,  by  suppres- 
sion and  counter-violence,  will  never  succeed. 
There  is  but  one  way  to  avoid  revolution,  and 
that  is  to  change  the  conditions,  the  conditions 
represented  in  this  country  by  Lowell  and  Law- 
rence and  Fall  River,  by  the  mining  camps  of 
Arizona  and  the  lumber  camps  of  Louisiana  and 
California,  the  conditions  which  breed,  in  all  who 
are  not  reduced  by  them  to  the  enduring  stupidity 
of  oxen,  the  revolutionary  mind. 

The  best  illustration  of  the  relation  between  a 
narrowed  idea  of  labor  and  the  catastrophic 
method  (as  the  only  alternative  to  impotence)  is 
found  in  the  clear-cut  principle  of  Marxism,  the 
great  inspiration  of  all  such  movements.  It 
draws  a  hard-and-fast  line  between  the  "prole- 
tariat," the  wage-earning  class,  and  the  "bour- 
geoisie," the  capitalistic  class.  Its  method  is  the 
"class-war,"  and  therefore  it  seeks  to  sharpen  the 
class-consciousness  of  the  wage-earner.  It  pours 
contempt  on  all  "opportunism,"  all  moderation, 
all  reformism,  for  these  weaken  the  sense  of  class- 
distinction,  the  necessary  lever  of  revolution.  It 


72     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

would  reverse  the  dominance  of  classes,  by  the 
triumph  of  the  proletariat.  That  is  the  revolu- 
tion, and  beyond  that  it  scarcely  looks.  It  com- 
bines simplicity  of  doctrine,  the  all-sufficient  divi- 
sion of  mankind  into  the  exploiters  and  the  ex- 
ploited, the  bourgeoisie  and  the  proletariat,  with 
the  mysticism  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic.  The 
simplicity  and  the  mysticism  are  alike  misleading, 
but  they  exercise  together  a  powerful  appeal; 
for  the  mystic  element,  with  its  suggestion  of  an 
uninvestigated  land  of  promise  beyond  the  revolu- 
tion, cloaks  the  weakness  of  the  logic. 

It  is  well  to  remember  that  this  doctrine  arose 
in  the  Germany  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century, 
which  was  carrying  over  into  the  industrial  field 
the  sharp  class  distinctions  of  feudalism.  Marx 
himself  was  not  a  "proletarian,"  but  a  "bour- 
geois" of  protestant  Jewish  origin,  a  detached 
and  ironic  personality  seeking  with  bitter  insight 
the  means  of  overthrowing  the  existing  regime. 
Wherever  class  domination  is  strongly  entrenched 
behind  law  and  usage,  in  particular  wherever  the 
middle  class  is  subservient,  as  in  Germany,  or  in- 
significant, as  in  Russia,  there  is  the  proper  soil 
for  the  seed  of  Marxism.  Hence  its  origin  and 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       73 

growth  in  Germany — hence  its  fateful  power  in 
the  second  Russian  revolution.  But  Western  de- 
mocracy is  a  different  soil,  even  though  the  same 
weeds  of  industrial  exploitation  flourish  therein, 
and  the  attempts  to  transplant  the  Marxist  doc- 
trine have  had  relatively  little  success.  On  the 
contrary,  there  is  reason  for  holding  that  the 
failure  of  the  once  powerful  Knights  of  Labor 
was  in  great  measure  due  to  the  attempt  of  this 
organization  to  build  a  labor  class  consciousness, 
though  not  on  Marxist  principles.  There  are 
signs  that  more  recent  industrial  developments, 
the  consolidation  of  large-scale  business  and  the 
completer  fixation  of  the  wage-earning  status  as 
free  lands  become  a  memory  of  the  past,  are 
working  towards  the  sharpened  distinction  be- 
tween "labor"  and  "capital."  But  other  de- 
velopments, in  especial  the  newer  immigration, 
have  been  placing  effectual  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  solidarity.  To-day  the  solidarity  of  the  dom- 
inant labor  force  in  America  is  neither  that  of 
class-conscious  proletarianism  nor  yet  that  inspired 
by  the  sense  of  the  common  interest  of  all  pro- 
ducers :  it  is  merely  that  of  group-conscious  union- 
ized skilled  labor.  The  great  body  of  labor  so 


74    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

inspired,  in  its  too  exclusive  devotion  to  immedi- 
ate ends,  does  not  yet  understand  that  here  are 
the  two  final  alternatives  for  labor,  the  limitation 
of  the  idea  to  the  class  of  waga-earners  (which 
indeed  for  American  labor  would  be  an  extension 
rather  than  a  limitation)  or  else  the  inclusion 
within  the  idea  of  the  whole  class  of  producers. 
In  the  former  case  it  must  move  within  a  circle 
of  narrow  aims  unless  it  breaks  through  by  the 
blind  violence  of  mere  numbers;  embracing  the 
latter  alternative  it  envisages,  makes  /possible, 
and  prepares  an  industrial  order  fit  for  a  real  de- 
mocracy, maintained  by  the  self-government  of 
those  who  produce  instead  of  by  the  autocracy  of 
those  who  own. 

In  Great  Britain  labor  has  been  moving  to  this 
latter  conception,  in  spite  of  the  practical  difficul- 
ties which  it  involves.  It  has  opened  its  ranks 
freely  to  all  who  accept  its  platform,  whether  or 
not  they  are  enrolled  in  trade  unions  or  otherwise 
directly  associated  with  wage-earning.  The  line  it 
draws  is  not  between  the  wage-earner  and  all  the 
rest,  but  between  the  active  worker  or  producer  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  mere  "profiteer"  and  the  pas- 
sive recipient  of  rent  and  interest  on  the  other.  It 


WIDENING  THE  IDEA  OF  LABOR       75 

welcomes  the  extension  of  unionism  to  the  profes- 
sions, to  the  civil  service,  to  clerks  and  all  manner 
of  employes  of  all  grades.  Its  prophets  are  be- 
ginning to  see  the  disastrous  effects  of  having  the 
technical  ability  and  administrative  skill  on  the  op- 
posing side.  They  are  beginning  to  see  that  the 
side  which  can  win  the  brains  of  industry  can  win 
the  battle.  The  effect  of  the  war,  with  its  enor- 
mous imposition  of  new  burdens  on  all  producers, 
causing  a  great  part  of  the  results  of  their  labor  to 
pass  over,  in  the  form  of  interest  on  war  bonds,  to 
non-producers,  will  make  easier  the  new  appeal. 
"Over  this  issue,"  says  the  manifesto  of  the  Brit- 
ish Labor  Party  already  referred  to,  "of  how 
the  financial  burden  of  the  war  is  to  be  borne, 
and  how  the  necessary  revenue  is  to  be  raised,  the 
greatest  political  battles  will  be  fought.  In  this 
matter  the  Labor  Party  claims  the  support  of  four- 
fifths  of  the  whole  nation,  for  the  interests  of  the 
clerk,  the  teacher,  the  doctor,  the  minister  of  re- 
ligion, the  average  retail  shopkeeper  and  trader, 
and  all  the  mass  of  those  living  on  small  incomes 
are  identical  with  those  of  the  artisan.'* 

While  labor  in  the    States   has  yet   scarcely 
reached  the  parting  of  the  ways,  it  is  significant 


76     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

that  labor  in  Canada,  closely  associated  as  it  is 
in  temper  and  organization  with  the  former,  is 
choosing  the  greater  alternative.  It  has  recently 
approved  of  the  formation  of  a  Labor  Party  of 
Canada,  and  this  party,  already  alive  and  active, 
has  resolved  to  admit  individual  members  who, 
whether  members  of  unions  or  not,  subscribe  to 
its  constitution  and  program ;  while  it  proclaims  as 
its  general  object  the  promotion  of  the  "politi- 
cal, social  and  economic  emancipation  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  more  particularly  of  those  who  depend 
directly  upon  their  own  exertions  by  hand  or  brain 
for  the  means  of  life." 

This  seems  the  inevitable  road  for  labor  in 
lands  where  political  democracy  is  already  some- 
what advanced.  By  following  that  road  British 
and  Canadian  labor  are  moving  to  take  a  greater 
part  than  before  in  the  determination  of  the  life 
of  the  community.  (But  see  footnote  p.  161.) 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WASTE  OF  THE  PRESENT  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM 

The  meaning  of  waste.  The  waste  of  industrial 
strife  and  of  the  disharmony  between  manage- 
ment and  workers.  The  universal  waste  of 
competition.  The  waste  of  unemployment. 
The  waste  of  labor-turnover.  The  loss  of 
educationl  opportunity.  The  lack  of  voca- 
tional guidance  and  of  the  adaptation  of  work 
to  aptitude.  The  waste  involved  in  working 
conditions,  especially  of  women  and  children. 
The  waste  of  the  disparity  of  wealth.  Wealth 
and  well-being. 

NEARLY  everybody  seems  willing  to  admit  to- 
day that  some  change  in  the  conditions  of  indus- 
try is  both  possible  and  desirable.  But  by  what 
means?  And  how  much?  Some  would  be  con- 
tent to  patch  up  the  old  industrial  structure — a 
little  cement  and  paint,  they  think,  will  serve- 
while  others  want  it  rebuilt,  reconstructed,  even 
from  the  foundations.  Our  attitude  to  this  ques- 
tion, so  far  as  it  is  not  determined  by  the  sense 

77 


78    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

of  our  immediate  interest,  will  depend  on  our 
appreciation  of  the  amount  of  waste  involved  in 
the  existing  system,  and  then  on  the  extent  of 
our  belief  in  the  feasibility  of  a  system  which 
would  avoid  that  waste.  To  understand  the 
problem  we  must  begin  by  realizing  the  significance 
of  the  wastefulness  which  characterizes  our  mod- 
ern industry. 

By  waste  I  mean  all  that  loss,  of  potential 
material  resources,  of  potential  energy  and  skill, 
and  finally  of  potential  well-being,  due  to  human 
mismanagement,  disharmony,  and  lack  of  the  in- 
telligent direction  of  means  to  ends.  A  system 
might  be,  by  comparison,  very  productive  and  at 
the  same  time  very  wasteful.  The  present  in- 
dustrial system  is  many  times  more  productive 
than  the  old  domestic  system,  and  yet  it  is,  as 
a  system,  excessively  and  wickedly  wasteful. 

We  are  apt  to  think  too  narrowly  on  this  sub- 
ject. One  obvious  form  of  waste  arrests  our 
attention,  and  we  seldom  realize  that  it  is  only 
one,  and  far  from  the  most  serious,  of  many. 
I  mean  the  loss  due  to  the  direct  strife  of  labor 
and  capital,  in  particular  the  loss  caused  by  strikes 
and  lockouts.  According  to  the  Report  of  the 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     79 

Department  of  Labor  already  referred  to,  there 
occurred  in  the  United  States  during  the  period 
1881-1905,  38,303  strikes  and  lockouts,  lasting 
on  an  average  31  days,  involving  199,954  estab- 
lishments and  7,444,954  employes  apart  from 
those  incidentally  thrown  out  of  work.  In  Can- 
ada, for  the  five  years  1911-15  the  time-loss 
from  strikes  and  lockouts  is  given  officially  as 
nearly  five  million  working  days.  But  these  losses, 
well  worth  consideration  as  they  are,  shrink  to  in- 
significance in  the  sum  total  of  industrial  wastage. 
The  whole  time-loss  amounts  to  no  more  than 
the  time  devoted  to  a  few  holidays  in  the 
year.  It  is  little,  indeed,  compared  with  the  in- 
direct loss  caused  by  the  mutual  distrust  of  work- 
ers and  management.  For  Great  Britain,  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb  has  estimated  that,  as  a  consequence 
of  the  standardization  of  product,  the  use  of  auto- 
matic machinery  wherever  possible,  of  team  work 
and  specialization  among  the  workers,  and  other 
changes  made  possible  for  the  most  part  by  the 
abrogation  of  trade  union  rules,  "the  15,000  or 
20,000  establishments,  large  or  small,  in  every 
conceivable  industry,  with  which  the  Ministry 
of  Munitions,  the  Board  of  Trade,  the  War  Trade 


8o    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

Department,  and  the  Admiralty  have  been  in 
touch,  are  now  turning  out,  on  an  average,  more 
than  twice  the  product  per  operative  employed 
that  they  did  before  the  war;  whilst,  assuming 
the  same  standard  rates  of  wages,  grade  by  grade, 
the  labor-cost  works  out  considerably  lower  than 
under  the  old  system."  This  is  not,  as  some 
simple-minded  people  imagine,  a  condemnation 
of  trade-union  rules  under  the  old  system;  it  is  a 
condemnation  of  the  system  and  not  of  the  rules, 
for  the  latter  were  evolved  by  the  workers,  as  the 
result  of  bitter  experience,  to  protect  them  against 
the  grinding  wheels  of  competitive  industry.  The 
irony  of  the  situation  lies  in  this,  that  the  worker 
in  his  not  unjustified  fear  of  immediate  competi- 
tive evils,  is  driven  to  resist  the  very  process  which 
makes  possible  the  abolition  of  the  poverty  under 
which  he  suffers,  to  wit,  the  increase  of  his  own 
productive  power. 

In  truth,  the  most  pervasive  cause  of  waste  is 
the  competitive  organization — or  disorganization 
— of  industry.  The  old-fashioned  theory  of  the 
excelling  virtue  of  competition — the  "soul  of 
trade,"  the  "fly-wheel  of  industry,"  the  leveler, 
the  equalizer,  the  spring  of  inventiveness,  the  safe- 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     81 

guard  of  the  consumer,  the  determinant  of  prog- 
ress— a  theory  already  discarded  by  the  success- 
ful man  of  business — received  a  further  deadly 
blow  when  the  urgency  of  the  war  compelled  every 
belligerent  nation  to  limit,  for  the  sake  of  clear 
economy,  this  wasteful  conflict,  bringing  each  es- 
sential industry  into  the  form  of  a  quasi-coopera- 
tive whole.  This  is  not  the  place  to  examine  in 
detail  the  dangers  and  the  advantages  of  such  a 
course.  I  believe  that  there  is  no  way  back,  and 
that  the  lauded  benefits  of  free  competition,  which 
it  so  very  partially  achieved,  must  now  be  sought, 
and  may  be  far  better  secured,  by  enlightened  co- 
operation. Of  this  I  am  confident,  that  only  by 
the  way  of  coordination  is  it  possible  to  abolish 
the  more  deadly  forms  of  waste  which  have  char- 
acterized our  modern  industry.  Under  "free" 
competition,  one  or  two  rapacious  employers  can 
set  a  standard  which  the  rest  must  follow;  under 
it  worker  and  employer  alike  are  at  the  mercy 
of  every  chance  fluctuation  of  demand  and  supply; 
under  it  an  inevitable  reserve  of  unemployed  labor 
is  constantly  reducing  the  mass  of  workers  to  the 
subsistence  level  and  driving  a  large  proportion 
of  them  below  the  line  of  poverty.  Most  of  the 


82     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

further  wastes  which  we  must  now  review  are 
products  of  the  system  of  "free"  competition. 

In  saying  this  I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that 
competition  as  a  motive  and  stimulus  in  industry 
can  or  should  be  abolished.  The  waste  we  are 
considering  is  due,  strictly  speaking,  not  to  the 
presence  of  competition  but  to  the  absence  of  or- 
ganization. The  "free"  competition  of  workers 
or  of  employers  means  that  they  are  not  intelli- 
gent enough,  or  strong  enough,  to  cooperate  in 
pursuit  of  their  common  interest.  They  are  de- 
feating their  respective  ends  by  competing  among 
themselves,  and  the  service  of  the  whole  com- 
munity is  not,  as  I  believe,  best  fulfilled  in  the  proc- 
ess. The  old  theory  minimized  the  common  inter- 
est. Under  "free"  competition  what  one  loses 
another  gains — but  not  to  the  extent  of  the  loss  of 
the  former.  There  is  always  a  residuum  of  waste, 
and  when  the  competition  is  for  the  mere  means 
of  livelihood  the  waste  is  so  great  as  to  be  disas- 
trous. 

If  the  question  is  raised,  "How  then  can  we 
distinguish  between  the  competition  which  is  bene- 
ficial and  that  which  is  harmful  to  society?"  the 
answer,  in  general,  is  simple.  Competition  as  at 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     83 

substitute  for  cooperation  is  wasteful,  competi- 
tion within  a  cooperative  order  is  a  highly  neces- 
sary stimulus.  Competition  as  a  substitute  for 
cooperation,  as  for  example  that  of  unorganized 
workers  to  obtain  work,  means  a  certain  frustra- 
tion by  each  of  all  the  rest  in  the  pursuit  of  an 
object  or  interest  which  all  of  the  qualified  appli- 
cants can  or  should  be  able  to  obtain.:  Competi- 
tion within  a  system  of  cooperation,  say  competi- 
tion for  promotion,  if  conducted  on  the  basis  of 
relative  merits,  belongs  to  a  quite  different  order^ 
In  this  case  the  limit  of  common  interest  has  al- 
ready been  reached.  Of  two  competitors  for  ad- 
vancement to  a  single  office,  only  one  can  possibljr 
achieve  his  end.  Here  competition  is  both  neces- 
sary and  beneficial. 

The  truth  that  disorganization  fof  which  cei*- 
tain  types  of  competition  are  a  concomitant)  and 
not  competition  as  such  as  the  enemy  is  reenforced 
when  we  remember  that  the  relation)  between 
workers  and  employers,  whether  haphazard  or 
well-ordered,  is  not  a  competitive  one  at  all.  Em- 
ployers compete  with  employers  and  workers  with 
workers,  but  employers  do  not  compete  with  work- 
ers. These  two  cooperate  ^more  or  less  will- 


84     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ingly,  but  always  necessarily)  in  production,  and 
they  bargain  in  respect  of  the  return  from  their 
productive  cooperation.  In  both  regards  disor- 
ganization is  in  general  profound,  and  the  conse- 
quent waste  incalculable. 

Consider,  again,  the  waste  due  to  unemployment 
and  underemployment.  The  imperious  demands 
of  warfare  have  reduced  unemployment  to  a  mini- 
mum unknown  before,  but  always  in  normal  times 
there  is  a  certain  percentage  of  unemployed,  vary- 
ing with  the  season  of  the  year.  In  periods  of 
depression  it  reaches  catastrophic  proportions, 
and  hasty  palliatives  are  adopted  to  relieve  the 
more  obvious  cases  of  distress.  Since  most  people 
are  quite  unaware  of  the  magnitude  of  this  evil, 
it  may  be  well  to  give  some  figures.  In  1905,  ac- 
cording to  the  U.  S.  Federal  Census  of  Manufac- 
turers, the  number  of  wage-earners  in  employ- 
ment fluctuated  from  7,017^138  in  one  month  to 
4,599,091  in  another.  In  the  winter  of  1914—15, 
there  were,  according  to  the  investigation  under- 
taken by  the  Metropolitan  Life  Assurance  Com- 
pany, 442,000  persons  unemployed  in  New  York 
City.  In  the  same  winter  the  Ontario  Commis- 
sion on  Unemployment  reported  some  30,000 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     85 

unemployed  in  that  province.  It  is  hard  to  con- 
ceive the  fearful  human  significance  of  figures 
such  as  these.  And  it  is  all  sheer  waste,  waste  of 
so  much  productive  power  and  therefore  of  ma- 
terial resources,  waste  of  health  and  decency  and 
happiness.  Besides,  the  standing  menace  of  un- 
employment acts  as  a  pernicious  influence  over 
the  whole  field  of  industry.  It  is  the  more  tragic 
in  that  all  thorough  students  of  the  subject  are 
agreed  that  intelligent  reorganization  of  industry 
would  reduce  genuine  unemployment  to  a  small 
fraction  of  its  present  extent.  This  would  re- 
move that  dread  which  more  than  any  other  em- 
bitters the  worker's  life,  makes  him  feel  that  he 
is  a  mere  "wage-slave,"  and  renders  him  hostile, 
because  of  their  disturbing  effect  on  employment, 
to  all  developments  of  the  industrial  process. 

Take  again  the  loss  due  to  "labor-turnover." 
If  a  plant  employing  a  thousand  workers  requires 
to  hire  during  the  year  five  hundred  more  in  order 
to  maintain  its  force  of  a  thousand,  then  it  is  said 
to  have  an  annual  labor-turnover  of  fifty  per  cent. 
The  labor-turnover  of  modern  industry  is  a  damn- 
ing evidence  of  material  and  spiritual  waste.  In 
some  cases  it  reaches  quite  amazing  figures,  such 


86    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

as  the  six  thousand  per  cent  per  annum  which  re- 
cent employment  figures  for  eight  months  on  the 
Pennsylvania  Lines  West  reveal.  This  was  of 
course  due  to  exceptional  and  transitory  condi- 
tions, but  annual  turnovers  of  five  hundred  and 
six  hundred  per  cent  seem  by  no  means  very  rare. 
The  study  by  Mr.  Grieves  of  a  number  of  metal 
plants  in  the  Middle  West  showed  a  turnover  of 
more  than  150  per  cent,  and  Mr.  Boyd  Fisher 
found  the  turnover  in  a  large  number  of  Detroit 
plants  to  average  more  than  250  per  cent.  To  in- 
terpret these  figures  we  must  think  not  only  of  the 
direct  loss  involved  in  fitting  new  men  into  the 
place  of  the  old — a  loss  only  now  coming  to  be  un- 
derstood— but  also  of  the  social  loss  due  to  thelack 
of  stability  and  direction  in  this  drifting  mass  of 
casual  workers.  This  latter  can  of  course  never  be 
calculated,  but  wherever  we  find  work  casualized 
we  find  men  decivilized,  aliens  and  sometimes  even 
"alien  enemies"  of  society,  losing  all  strength  and 
unity  of  purpose  so  that  life  degenerates  into  a 
fumbling  series  of  maladjustments  to  the  more  ele- 
mentary and  animal  needs.  From  such  a  fate  it 
may  sometimes  be  the  best,  and  not  the  worst,  who 
seek  a  refuge  in  rebelliousness.  And  this  too  is 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     87 

mere  waste,  the  penalty  of  disorganization.  Some 
amount  of  labor  turnover  is  of  course  inevitable; 
a  limited  amount  may  even  be  regarded  as  desir- 
able, as  expressing  the  mobility  due  to  opportunity, 
but  nothing  can  justify  the  figures  already  cited. 
That  much  can  be  done  to  diminish  labor- 
turnover  is  revealed  by  the  classic  instance  of  the 
Ford  Works  in  Detroit,  where  the  percentage  in 
1912-13,  a  normally  good  year,  was  over  four 
hundred,  and  in  1913-14  was  only  twenty-three. 
It  would  not  be  fair  to  suggest  that  every  manu- 
facturer can  or  should  emulate  the  methods  possi- 
ble to  Ford,  but  there  are  sufficient  cases  already 
on  record — such  as  those  of  the  Dennison  Manu- 
facturing Company,  the  Plimpton  Press,  and  the 
Joseph  Feiss  Company — to  show  that  intelligent 
consideration  of  the  human  factor  can  vastly  re- 
duce this  waste. 

Is  there  not  something  here  worthy  of  deep 
reflection,  that  no  company  could  exist  which  com- 
pletely changed  its  plant  or  its  site  or  its  manage- 
ment two  or  three  or  more  times  in  the  year, 
whereas  a  like  change  in  respect  of  its  body  of 
workers  is  not  only  possible,  but  actually  happens 


68    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

without  exciting,  in  most  cases,  any  flicker  of 
attention  or  concern? 

A  profound  source  of  waste  is  the  lack  of  edu- 
cational opportunity,  from  which  the  urgencies 
of  competitive  livelihood  shut  off  too  soon  the 
great  majority  of  the  people.  The  extension  of 
educational  opportunity  would  work  for  welfare, 
in  many  ways.  It  would  relieve  the  labor  market 
and  thus  help  to  solve  an  immediate  problem  of 
the  future.  It  would  increase  efficiency,  and  thusi 
in  due  course  the  available  wealth  of  the  country. 
It  would  evoke  talent  and  genius  where  it  lies  un- 
aroused  or  thwarted.  It  would  help  men  to  un- 
derstand their  common  interests,  and  so  to  build 
on  that  basis  the  unity  of  society.  Finally — for 
the  education  of  which  I  am  thinking  is  social 
as  well  as  technical  and  vocational — it  would  help 
men  to  live,  which  is  all  that  matters. 

We  are  now  beginning  to  see  the  national  im- 
portance of  technical  schools,  trade  schools, 
schools  for  employment  managers,  supervisors, 
foremen,  and  so  on.  It  is  all  part  of  that  pro- 
gressive application  of  science  which,  the  source 
of  wealth  through  power,  is  able,  in  a  decently 
ordered  society,  to  raise  human  conditions  above 


;  WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     89 

the  level  of  deadening  necessity.  Science  unap- 
plied is  humanity  wasted,  though  we  must  be  sure 
that  it  is  true  science  we  apply.  There  are  indus- 
trial spheres  to  which  the  application  of  science 
is  still  only  rudimentary,  with  corresponding  loss. 
There  is,  in  particular,  very  little  done  to  secure 
a  proper  adjustment  between  worker  and  work. 
More  care  and  expense  have  in  general  been  be- 
stowed on  the  attainment  of  mechanical  efficiency 
than  on  the  adaptation  of  industrial  operations 
to  the  particular  aptitudes  and  needs  of  the  opera- 
tives. Here,  as  always,  the  loss  is  twofold,  in 
the  worker  and  in  the  work,  waste  at  once  of 
wealth  and  of  humanity. 

The  waste  due  to  evil  working  conditions,  ex- 
cessive toil  and  strain,  unhealthy  surroundings, 
and  unnecessary  exposure  to  the  risks  of  accident 
and  poisoning,  great  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  men, 
is  more  flagrant  still  and  more  pernicious  in  the 
case  of  women  and  of  children.  America  has  an 
unhappy  distinction  in  the  laxness  of  its  factory 
laws  for  the  regulation  of  the  industrial  work  of 
children,  that  most  wasteful  of  all  immediate 
economies.  As  for  the  labor  of  women,  I  shall 
have  occasion  later  to  speak  of  it  more  especially. 


90    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

The  squandering  of  the  health  and  strength  of 
women  is  one  of  the  great  smirches  on  our  civiliza- 
tion. Their  special  needs  are  so  little  regarded 
that  their  normal  hours  of  work  often  impose  on 
them  a  heavy  undermining  strain;  that  rest-rooms, 
rest-periods,  and  facilities  for  ceasing  work  in  ac- 
cord with  physiological  requirements  are  often 
unprovided;  and  that  they  are  allowed  to  (or 
by  poverty  compelled  to)  toil  in  factories  in  the 
periods  before  and  after  childbirth. 

Finally  there  is  the  intolerable  waste  due  to 
the  extreme  disparity  of  the  distribution  of  wealth. 
The  extreme  poverty  of  masses  of  workers,  with 
its  sordid  and  ceaseless  harassment,  cramping 
and  perverting  and  devitalizing  all  healthy  hu- 
man instincts,  gains  especial  bitterness  from  the 
contrast  with  the  mere  superfluity  which  their 
labor  helps  to  create  for  others.  The  attempt  to 
justify  this  disparity  in  terms  of  "natural  selec- 
tion" has  now  become  vain  and  obsolete.  One 
of  the  most  certain  of  economic  (or  psychologi- 
cal) laws  is  the  "principle  of  diminishing  utility." 
According  to  this  principle,  an  additional  dollar 
or  two  a  week  means  more,  renders  more  service, 
to  the  family  whose  income  is  twenty  dollars, 


WASTE  OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SYSTEM     91 

than  to  the  family  whose  income  is  two  hundred, 
still  more  than  to  the  family  whose  income  is  two 
thousand.  From  which  it  follows  that  any  redis- 
tribution of  wealth  which,  without  disastrous  dis- 
turbance, rendered  less  unequal  the  shares  of  rich 
and  poor,  would  increase  the  total  service  of 
wealth,  that  which  alone  justifies  it  or  its  pursuit, 
the  contribution  it  makes  to  welfare.  If  this  prin- 
ciple holds,  how  wasteful  must  a  civilization  be 
which  concentrates,  as  in  America,  60  per  cent  of 
the  national  wealth  in  the  possession  of  2  per  cent 
of  the  nation,  while  another  5  per  cent  of  the 
wealth  is  shared  out  in  the  poverty  of  65  per  cent 
of  the  people ! 

For  there  is  after  all  only  one  kind  of  waste, 
waste  of  well-being,  of  the  opportunity  really  to 
live.  All  else  is  waste  only  if  it  means  a  loss  of 
that.  All  achievement  is  vain  if  it  does  not  also 
achieve  that.  I  have  dwelt  largely  on  the  ma- 
terial side,  but  this  economic  loss  is  simply  an  im- 
perfect index  of  spiritual  loss.  Where  you  find 
the  one  you  may  look  for  the  other.  Here  is 
found  the  true  condemnation  of  the  "unmeaning 
taskwork"  which  fills  the  existence  of  multitudes, 
of  the  kind  of  poverty  which  denies  them  alike 


92    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  resources  and  the  leisure  to  live.  It  is  be- 
cause science  shows  a  way  out  of  this  waste,  pro- 
vided we  have  the  will  and  the  intelligence  to  take 
it,  that  the  future  of  industry — which  is  after  all 
the  future  of  the  world — gleams  with  hope 
through  the  darkness  of  the  present.  It  is  that 
prospect  which  demands  and  justifies  all  the  efforts 
we  can  make  to  achieve  a  real  industrial  recon- 
struction. There  has  been  too  much  sacrifice  of 
life  and  happiness  in  the  horrible  waste  of  war 
for  any  of  us  to  be  indifferent  to  what  remains  or 
to  what  may  yet  be  restored  or  won. 


CHAPTER  VI 


War  and  social  instability.  The  appeal  of  radi- 
cal programs  in  the  revulsion  after  war.  The 
moral  necessity  of  new  labor  conditions.  The 
great  opportunity:  grounds  for  hopes  and 
fears.  The  critical  first  period. 

WARS  have  been  deliberately  planned — so  it  is 
said — to  break  up  the  internal  forces  of  radical- 
ism by  the  strong  counter-appeal  of  national  agi 
grandizement.  If  it  be  so,  it  is  another  instance 
of  the  want  of  imagination  and  the  misunderstand- 
ing of  history  which  are  among  the  most  marked 
spiritual  qualities  of  militarism.  At  the  outset 
war  inevitably  checks  all  radical  movements  and 
even  fosters  the  reactionary  spirit.  But  its  after- 
effect seems  often  to  be  of  the  opposite  charac- 
ter. There  are  instances  of  this  kind  all  through 
history,  since  the  time  when  the  sailors  of  Salamis 
changed  the  Athenian  constitution.  Waterloo 
was  followed  by  Peterloo  and  all  the  ferment  that 

93 


94    LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

led  toward  the  Reform  Act.  The  Franco-Prus- 
sian war  gave  birth  to  the  Paris  Commune  and  the 
Third  Republic.  The  Russo-Japanese  war  was 
succeeded  by  the  revolutionary  movement  of 
1905,  the  forerunner  of  the  immense  Russian 
revolution  which  the  Great  War  made  possible. 
War  on  a  grand  scale  always  means  a  break  with 
the  past.  It  often  generates  at  the  last  a  sense  of 
revulsion  which,  reenforced  by  the  condition  of 
poverty  and  of  war-indebtedness,  gives  a  new  oc- 
casion to  the  forces  that  make  for  social  upheaval. 
Those  who  imagined  that  this  war  would  break 
up  labor  radicalism  have  by  this  time  discovered 
their  mistake.  The  party  of  the  left  is  rising 
from  its  submergence  in  the  war  spirit.  In  Great 
Britain,  most  notably,  the  Labor  Party  is  seizing 
the  opportunity  which  the  changing  national  mood 
presents. 

For  one  thing,  a  "labor  party"  is  the  only  party 
which  professes  a  sweeping  program  of  industrial 
reconstruction.  The  Provisional  Report  on  Re- 
construction issued  by  a  committee  of  the  Brit- 
ish Labor  Party  is  a  document  deserving  the 
most  careful  study.  It  has  a  strength  and  assur- 
ance, a  clearness  of  statement  and  certainty  of  aim 


THE  CRISIS  95 

which  all  must  acknowledge,  whether  or  not  we 
accept  its  specific  proposals.  It  is  not,  like  many 
previous  manifestoes  of  labor,  the  proclamation 
of  principles  in  the  void,  with  no  expectation  of 
their  fulfillment.  So  forthright  a  program  has  a 
great  advantage  in  a  time  of  grave  instability 
like  the  present.  Men  who  have  seen  and  shared 
in  catastrophic  changes  realize  in  a  new  way  the 
possibility  of  the  changes  they  themselves  desire, 
and  are  more  disposed  to  seek  them.  Men  who 
have  seen  the  world  upturned  are  no  longer  de- 
terred by  the  idea  of  revolution.  The  potentiali- 
ties of  good  and  evil,  of  reconstruction  and  of  dis- 
integration, herein  revealed,  call  insistently  for 
the  highest  statesmanship  we  can  find. 

Further,  there  is  a  moral  necessity  in  the  new 
situation  which  cannot  be  ignored.  It  is  the  State 
which  called  from  their  ordinary  employments 
the  myriads  of  munition  and  other  war  workers ; 
it  is  the  State  which  called  to  arms  the  myriads 
of  soldiers.  Must  not  the  State  be  responsible  for 
their  complete  replacement  in  industrial  life  ?  The 
soldiers  who  return  to  normal  life  do  so  in  the 
consciousness  of  having  deserved  well  of  the 
country  to  which  they  offered  up  their  lives.  This 


gives  a  great  moral  backing  to  their  demand  for 
industrial  security.  How,  for  example,  can  it  be 
any  longer  possible  to  justify  their  subjections  to 
the  hazards  of  unemployment?  The  country 
that  dared  to  claim  their  lives  must  ensure  that 
they  are  not  deprived  of  their  livelihood.  They 
demand  employment,  security,  and  a  "fair"  return 
for  their  toil,  these  at  least,  and  they  must  some- 
how or  other  be  provided.  Somehow  or  other — 
with  waste  and  haste  or  with  forethought  and 
productiveness,  according  to  the  blindness  or  the 
vision  of  our  governments. 

I  have  tried  in  the  preceding  chapters  to  ex- 
plain the  new  position  and  demands  of  labor. 
These  have  not  arisen  out  of  the  war  situation; 
they  issue  out  of  that  secular  process  by  which 
men  first  come  to  understand  and  then  endeavor 
to  control  the  systems  in  which  their  lives  are 
bound.  The  war  has  hastened  the  process  only 
as  a  storm  shakes  from  the  tree  the  ripening  fruit. 
There  is  no  natural  fruitfulness  in  calamity,  but 
it  may  shatter  the  clinging  timidities  which  impede 
the  acceptance  of  new  ideals.  Then  it  becomes 
dangerous  to  despise  or  to  ignore  them.  I  am 
convinced  that  the  first  necessity  of  the  industrial 


THE  CRISIS  97 

situation  is  the  sympathetic  understanding  of  these 
demands  and  the  attempt  to  meet  them  so  far  as 
they  make  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole  commu- 
nity. Merely  to  oppose  them  may  turn  a  peaceful 
into  a  catastrophic  process.  Only  by  facing  the 
facts  can  we  escape  this  catastrophe.  The  major- 
ity of  those  outside  its  ranks  are  strangely  igno- 
rant of  the  conditions  of  labor— and  this  ignorance 
is  in  fact  another  form  of  the  exclusive  class-con- 
sciousness which  in  the  workers  we  condemn. 
Ignorance,  on  either  side,  in  matters  of  this  kind, 
is  never  merely  ignorance;  it  is  also  prejudice. 
We  must  in  this  situation,  those  of  us  who  do  not 
belong  to  its  ranks  in  the  narrower  sense,  take 
common  counsel  with  labor,  understand  its  claims, 
at  least  offer  some  other  solution  if  we  cannot 
accept  its  own,  and  so  endeavor  to  secure  that 
harmony  of  industrial  life  which  was  not  attained 
in  the  past,  but  will  be  more  imperative  than  ever 
in  our  war-impoverished  future. 

What  are  we  doing  towards  that  end?  The 
time  for  action  has  already  come.  What  steps 
are  now  being  taken  to  turn  this  ferment  into  a 
healthy  process  of  restoration  of  the  common- 
wealth? We  have  talked  so  much  of  reconstruc- 


98     LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

tion  that  the  word  has  lost  its  sharpness,  but  have 
we  done  anything  to  justify  that  word?  A  certain 
amount  of  very  necessary  patching  is  being  accom- 
plished, for  example  in  the  training  and  "re-educa- 
tion" of  disabled  soldiers.  But  what  of  reconstruc- 
tion in  the  wider  sense?  Where  are  the  architects 
and  the  masons  and  the  hodmen  for  this  new  build- 
ing of  which  we  speak?  There  is  an  accredited 
story  that  the  walls  of  Jericho  fell  at  the  blast  of 
trumpets,  but  these  new  walls  will  not  rise  to  the 
trumpeting  of  our  orators.  If  they  rise  at  all,  it 
will  be  in  the  sweat  of  our  brows,  through  the 
labor  of  our  hands. 

The  time  is  ripe  for  thinking  of  these  things. 
The  war  has  stimulated  social  and  economic  forces 
of  the  most  opposite  character,  some  fraught  with 
the  gravest  danger  for  the  coming  era,  others 
bearing  the  promise  of  a  fairer  age.  The  finest 
opportunity  for  constructive  citizenship  ever  of- 
fered to  the  world  has  now  come.  The  end  of 
the  war  has  shifted  to  another  sphere  the  struggle 
between  the  forces  of  reaction  and  of  progress. 
There  is  much  ground  for  hope :  the  breaking  of 
the  chains  of  tradition  that  bind  men  to  evil  lest 


THE  CRISIS  99 

their  good  be  also  disturbed;  the  widening  of  the 
idea  of  service  and  responsibility  so  that  the  na- 
tion has  been  revealed  as  a  single  great  interde- 
pendency,  and  the  relation  of  nations  as  a  vital 
concern  of  the  members  of  each;  the  awakening 
of  men,  in  the  sight  of  an  old  order  war-destroyed, 
to  the  possibility  and  the  urgency  of  building 
anew;  and  even  the  sense  of  overwhelming  war- 
indebtedness  which  challenges  men,  by  its  insist- 
ence, to  face,  to  attack,  and  happily  to  overthrow 
the  institutionaf  ca:.ses  of  poverty  itself.  But 
there  is  also  much  roohi  for  fear.  The  habit  of 
despotic,  practically  uncontrolled,  power  which 
governments  acquire  in  war  may  persist  perni- 
ciously in  peace.  The  federation  of  commercial 
and  industrial  corporations  into  national  unities 
may  lead,  in  the  contest  for  world  markets,  to  new 
forms  of  competitive  struggle  at  least  as  sinister 
and  demoralizing  as  the  old,  the  plea  of  national 
interest  being  effectively  substituted  for  the  in- 
dividualistic arguments  of  older  days.  (Men  may 
still,  for  all  their  experience  of  war,  cherish  the 
delusion  that  the  vices  of  individuals  may  be  the 
virtues  of  nations.)  Or  these  same  giants,  finan- 
cial, commercial,  and  industrial,  may,  by  their  in- 


ioo  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

fluence  over  public  opinion  and  their  political  as- 
cendency, pervert  the  reconstruction  to  serve  the 
narrow  ends  of  pride  and  power  and  possession, 
aims  merely  cumulative  and  soulless.  And  there 
are  perils  of  the  after-war  spirit,  of  the  reaction 
from  the  exhausting  strain,  of  the  unnaturalness 
of  a  world  whose  young  men,  at  the  age  of  gen- 
erous enterprise  and  initiative  so  badly  needed 
now,  have  passed,  those  not  consumed  by  the 
flames,  through  the  decivilizing  furnace  of  war. 

Never  was  it  more  necessary  that  men  should 
know  what  they  seek,  and  the  conditions  under 
which  its  attainment  is  possible.  No  man  sets 
about  constructing  a  house  or  a  ship  or  a  ma- 
chine without  a  clear  plan  and  also  a  clear  pur- 
pose. But  many  men  think  they  can  "reconstruct" 
society  without  either.  There  should  in  fact  be 
a  reconstruction  period  as  definitely  as  there  was 
a  war  period.  Just  as  definitely  as  we  devoted 
ourselves  to  war,  so  should  we  devote  ourselves 
to  reconstruction  that  the  great  lessons  of  the 
former  period  may  not  fade  away  from  our  minds 
and  leave  us  where  we  were. 

Is  reconstruction,  as  some  seem  to  think,  merely 
the  provision  of  employment  for  those  left 


THE  CRISIS  loi 

stranded  by  the  cessation  of  war?  Is  it  merely 
expansion,  trade  development,  new  markets?  Is 
it  merely  the  increase  of  productivity  and  the  pay- 
ing of  war  debt?  Is  it  merely  the  settling  down, 
with  as  little  disturbance  as  possible,  to  the  old 
order  which  the  war  broke  through?  Shall  all 
that  travail,  all  that  sacrifice,  all  that  heart-search- 
ing move  us  to  nothing  more  than  the  quickest 
return  to  the  old  order  of  life?  Besides  busi- 
ness as  before,  shall  we  have  poverty  as  before, 
insecurity  as  before,  misery  as  before,  inefficiency 
as  before,  maleducation  as  before,  and  with  these, 
as  not  before,  the  growing  temper  of  revolution? 

There  can  be  no  reconstruction  worth  the  name 
unless  we  succeed  in  widening  for  all  men,  and 
especially  for  the  workers,  the  opportunity  to  live 
a  reasonable  life:  unless  we  can  remove  the  in- 
sistent economic  menaces  that  embitter  and  de- 
grade the  existence  of  multitudes,  and  unless  we 
can  also  develop  those  wider  interests,  those  cul- 
tural and  spiritual  interests,  without  which  life  is 
a  mere  scramble  for  material  things. 

Here  is  the  standard  by  which  we  should  judge 
the  variety  of  programs  offered  to  us  in  the  name 
of  reconstruction.  Trade  expansion?  Assured- 


102  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ly,  but  let  not  the  plea  be  heard  that  just  for  the 
sake  of  competing  abroad  we  must  submit  to  low 
wages  and  excessive  hours  at  home.  That  plea 
will  be  raised  in  every  land,  and  who  then  will 
profit?  Science  in  industry?  Yes,  that  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  succeed  but  unless  we  add  to 
it  the  science  of  human  relationship  we  shall  de- 
lude ourselves  with  specious  gains.  Increased  pro- 
ductivity? Yes,  without  greater  productivity  we 
are  wasting  part  of  our  strength,  squandering  our 
resources,  convicting  ourselves  of  unintelligence. 
But  let  us  so  increase  productivity  that  we  do  not 
in  the  process  sacrifice  the  producer  to  the  product. 
In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  during 
and  after  the  Napoleonic  wars  Britain  increased 
her  productivity  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  but 
perhaps  never  was  a  great  free  people  more  im- 
poverished, more  disgracefully  oppressed,  more 
endangered  in  morals  and  in  health.  The  first 
half  of  the  twentieth  century  must  not  reflect  that 
tale.  Technical  education?  Yes,  we  are  still  be- 
hind in  this  respect.  A  great  effort  must  be  made 
to  improve  it,  but  let  us  at  the  same  time  make  it 
the  means  to  provide  the  leisure  and  the  opportu- 


THE  CRISIS  103 

nity  for  the  wide  education  which  adds  to  the 
meaning  of  life. 

That  is  the  test,  the  test  of  the  common  wel- 
fare, which  we  must  apply  to  the  various  pro- 
grams so  lavishly  offered  us  today  in  the  name  of 
reconstruction.  Attempts  are  again  being  made  to 
divert  attention  from  these  issues  by  appealing  to 
mere  external  rivalries,  to  the  economic  forms 
of  that  international  competition  which  has  been 
so  ruinous  to  the  world.  The  blatant  appeals 
of  false  patriotism  are  again  being  put  forward 
to  turn  men's  thoughts  from  what  true  patriotism 
most  demands,  the  internal  reordering  of  our 
economic  life  so  as  to  provide  the  secure  basis  for 
true  national  greatness  in  a  civilization  whose 
ideals  need  no  longer  be  perverted,  or  left  un- 
realized, because  of  the  menace  of  external  foes. 
If  such  appeals  succeed,  if  the  patriotism  of  peace, 
because  of  the  weakness  of  the  imaginations  of 
men,  cannot  evoke  the  will  and  courage  devoted 
to  the  patriotism  of  war,  then  the  most  auspicious- 
ly pregnant  hour  of  the  industrial  age  must  pass 
without  delivering  its  birth. 


CHAPTER  VII 

INDUSTRIAL  RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN : 
PLANS  AND  PROPOSALS 

The  British  Labor  Party  on  the  "New  Social  Or- 
der." The  national  minimum  wage.  The 
democratic  control  of  industry.  The  -prob- 
lem of  taxation.  The  surplus  for  the  com- 
mon good. 

The  Whitley  Report.  Its  origin.  The 
progress  of  joint  industrial  councils,  national 
and  district,  and  workshop  committees.  Shall 
the  councils  become  lawmakers?  The  inade- 
quacy of  the  "cash-nexus."  Reception  of  the 
plan.  Reflection  on  the  chances  of  success. 


THE  sense  of  the  need  of  reconstruction  is  more 
acute  in  the  forward-looking  circles  of  Great 
Britain  than  in  those  of  America.  The  sense  of 
the  need — not  the  need  itself,  which,  as  I  shall  try 
to  show  later,  is,  with  us,  while  different,  no  less 
great.  We  are  more  complacent  for  the  most 

part,  but  needs  are  not  to  be  measured  by  com- 

104 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    105 

placencies,  which  indeed  may  often  be  but  an  ag- 
gravation of  any  problem  or  an  additional  ob- 
stacle to  its  solution.  Wherefore  the  plans  and 
proposals  now  being  so  actively  forwarded  in 
Britain  may  well  serve  us,  not  necessarily  as  a 
model,  but  at  least  as  an  incentive.  In  Britain, 
plans  are  being  laid  on  so  great  a  scale,  steps 
are  being  taken  of  such  a  far-reaching  kind,  that, 
whatever  their  ultimate  success  or  fate,  they  must 
assume  a  place  in  the  history  of  civilization  itself. 
While  numerous  bodies,  official  and  unofficial, 
have  been  giving  thought  to  the  subject,  two  pro- 
grams, that  of  the  British  Labor  Party  and  that 
of  the  Government,  are  of  outstanding  significance. 
In  this  matter  the  lead  has  undoubtedly  come  from 
labor — naturally,  because  it  is  labor  which  suffers 
most  and  first  from  lack  of  forethought.  There 
is,  besides,  a  certain  irony  in  the  present  situation 
so  far  as  labor  is  concerned.  The  time  of  its 
power  in  the  conflict  of  labor  and  capital  was  the 
very  time  when  the  exercise  of  that  power  would 
bring  most  danger  to  the  common  cause.  Its 
time  of  power  is  when  labor  is  in  most  demand, 
its  time  of  weakness  when  labor  is  over-plentiful. 
The  former  condition  is  found  in  time  of  war, 


io6  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  latter  is  the  natural  immediate  consequence 
of  the  return  of  peace.  Is  it  surprising  that  or- 
ganized labor  should  have  been  looking  forward 
anxiously  to  the  morrow?  But  the  perils  against 
which  it  would  guard  and  the  provision  which 
it  would  make  are  things  which  concern  us  all. 

The  chief  statement  of  the  views  of  labor  in 
Great  Britain  is  the  manifesto  entitled  "Labor 
and  the  New  Social  Order."  As  originally  is- 
sued, it  was  not  the  accepted  program  of  the  La- 
bor Party,  but  a  draft  prepared  by  a  sub-commit- 
tee for  submission  to  a  general  conference.  But 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  essentials  it  ex- 
presses the  general  attitude  of  British  labor.  It 
is  a  very  remarkable  document,  alike  in  its  spirit 
and  its  specific  proposals,  and  deserves  the  careful 
consideration  of  all  who  really  believe  in  recon- 
struction. In  what  follows  I  shall  try  to  illus- 
trate its  spirit  and  summarize  its  main  proposals. 
I  am  not  here  suggesting  that  the  measures  it  ad- 
vocates are  suitable  under  our  conditions — what 
these  may  be  we  shall  reserve  for  later  considera- 
tion— but  I  do  firmly  believe  that  the  conviction 
of  the  necessity  of  cooperative  action  and  of  in- 
telligent daring  which  it  displays  is  a  spirit  we 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   107 

would  do  well  to  emulate  in  seeking  a  solution  to 
the  problems  which  confront  ourselves.  These 
qaulities  have  never  been  more  finely  displayed 
than  in  this  document.  They  are  qualities  which 
even  those  who  find  most  to  differ  from  must 
recognize  and  admire. 

The  manifesto  begins  by  proclaiming  a  policy 
of  "Thorough."  "What  this  war  is  consuming 
is  not  merely  the  security,  the  homes,  the  liveli- 
hood and  the  lives  of  millions  of  innocent  fami- 
lies, and  an  enormous  proportion  of  all  the  ac- 
cumulated wealth  of  the  world,  but  also  the  very 
basis  of  the  peculiar  order  in  which  it  has  arisen. 
The  individualist  system  of«capitalistic  production 
based  on  the  private  ownership  and  competitive 
administration  of  land  and  capital,  with  its  reck- 
less 'profiteering'  and  wage-slavery;  with  its  glori- 
fication of  the  unhampered  struggle  for  the  means 
of  life,  and  its  hypocritical  pretense  of  the  'sur- 
vival of  the  fittest' ;  with  the  monstrous  inequality 
of  circumstances  which  it  produces  and  the  degra- 
dation and  the  brutalization,  both  moral  and 
spiritual,  resulting  therefrom,  may,  we  hope,  in- 
deed have  received  a  death  blow."  Unless  we 
beware,  it  will  be  the  death-blow  of  Western  civi- 


io8  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

lization,  since  it  is  easier  to  slip  into  ruin  than 
to  progress  into  higher  forms  of  organization. 
The  new  social  order  cannot  be  built  "in  a  year 
or  two  of  feverish  'Reconstruction',''  but  plans 
can  be  drafted  and  foundations  laid.  "The  four 
pillars  of  the  house  that  we  propose  to  erect, 
resting  on  the  common  foundation  of  the  demo- 
cratic control  of  society  in  all  its  activities,  may 
be  termed: 

(a)  The  Universal  Enforcement  of  a  National 

Minimum ; 

(b)  The  Democratic  Control  of  Industry; 

(c)  The  Revolution  in  National  Finance;  and 

(d)  The   Surplus   Wealth   for  the    Common 

Good." 

Each  of  these  principles  is  explained  and  de- 
fended in  turn.  The  argument  for  the  first  we 
can  perhaps  summarize  in  the  words  of  Bernard 
Shaw:  "Until  the  community  is  organized  in 
such  a  way  that  the  fear  of  bodily  want  is  forgot- 
ten as  completely  as  the  fear  of  wolves  already 
is  in  civilized  capitals,  we  shall  never  have  a  decent 
social  life."  The  minimum  at  the  then  existing 
level  of  prices  is  suggested  as  not  less  than  307  a 
week  (about  $7.50,  but  we  must  remember  that  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   109 

purchasing  power  of  money  in  England  fell  con- 
siderably after  the  date  at  which  the  Report  was 
drafted.  A  minimum  wage  on  so  broad  a  scale 
would  of  course  disorganize  the  present  system  of 
employment,  and  a  short  discussion  of  the  whole 
employment  question  follows.  The  proper  method 
of  demobilization  is  suggested  (it  is  fully  discussed 
in  another  labor  document),  and  then  the  general 
question  of  "securing  employment  for  all"  is  taken 
up.  The  principle  is  laid  down  uncompromisingly 
that  to  provide  suitable  employment  for  the  men 
and  women  it  called  away  to  war-occupations  rests 
upon  the  Government,  being  a  national  obliga- 
tion that  should  not  be  handed  over  either  to  pri- 
vate benevolent  societies  or  to  the  military  authori- 
ties. It  is  suggested  that  in  this  matter  the  ut- 
most use  should  be  made  of  the  trade  unions  and 
professional  organizations.  Should  the  demands 
of  ordinary  industry  be  inadequate  in  the  years 
of  transition,  ways  in  which  socially  useful  and 
honorable  employment  may  be  provided  are  con- 
sidered, including  (a)  rehousing  on  a  very  large 
scale,  (b)  building  of  schools,  training  colleges, 
technical  colleges,  &c,  and  the  provision  of  ade- 
quate staffs  for  these;  (c)  new  roads,  (d)  light 


i  io  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

railways,  (e)  unification  and  reorganization  of 
the  railway  and  canal  system,  (f)  afforestation, 
(g)  land  reclamation,  (h)  harbor  and  port  de- 
velopment, (i)  "the  opening  up  of  access  to  land 
by  cooperative  small  holdings  and  in  other  prac- 
ticable ways."  With  these  are  coupled  sugges- 
tions on  the  lines,  though  going  beyond  them,  of 
the  New  English  Education  Act.  Lastly  a 
scheme  of  social  insurance  against  unemployment 
is  outlined. 

The  difficult  question  of  the  "democratic  con- 
trol of  industry"  is  next  taken  up.  It  is  through- 
out a  plea  for  cooperative  organization  as  against 
wasteful  competitive  disorganization.  "What 
the  nation  needs  is  undoubtedly  a  great  bound  on- 
ward in  its  aggregate  productivity."  Let  those 
who  think  that  labor  obstinately  and  maliciously 
prefers  to  diminish  output  reflect  upon  these 
words.  To  this  end  a  plea  is  made  for  the  im- 
mediate nationalization  of  the  whole  transporta- 
tion system,  in  fact  for  a  "united  national  service 
of  communication  and  transport,"  as  well  as  of 
mines  and  of  electrical  plants.  The  argument  fof 
the  last-mentioned  is  of  interest  as  showing  the 
attitude  of  British  labor  towards  scientific  develop- 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   in 

ment.  "What  is  called  for  immediately  after 
the  war  is  the  erection  of  a  score  of  gigantic 
'super-power  stations,'  which  could  generate,  at 
incredibly  cheap  rates,  enough  electricity  for  the 
use  of  every  industrial  establishment  and  every 
private  household  in  Great  Britain,  the  present 
municipal  and  joint  stock  electrical  plants  being 
universally  linked  up  and  used  for  local  distribu- 
tion. This  is  inevitably  the  future  of  electricity." 
All  this  is  put  forward  as  only  a  first  installment 
of  the  "democratic  control"  at  which  the  party 
aims.  What  the  report  says  under  this  heading 
of  the  war-time  control  of  industry  is  specially 
significant.  "The  people  will  be  extremely  fool- 
ish if  they  ever  allow  their  indispensable  indus- 
tries to  slip  back  into  the  unfettered  control  of 
private  capitalists,  who  are,  actually  at  the  instance 
of  the  Government  itself,  now  rapidly  combining, 
trade  by  trade,  into  monopolist  trusts,  which  may 
presently  become  as  ruthless  in  their  extortion 
as  the  worst  American  examples.  Standing  as  it 
does  for  the  Democratic  Control  of  Industry,  the 
Labor  Party  would  think  twice  before  it  sanc- 
tioned any  abandonment  of  the  present  profitable 
centralization  of  purchase  of  raw  material;  of 


ii2  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  present  carefully  organized  'rationing,'  by 
joint  committees  of  the  trades  concerned,  of  the 
several  establishments  with  the  materials  they  re- 
quire ;  of  the  present  elaborate  system  of  'costing' 
and  public  audit  of  manufacturers'  accounts,  so  as 
to  stop  the  waste  heretofore  caused  by  the  mechan- 
ical inefficiency  of  the  more  backward  firms;  of 
the  present  salutary  publicity  of  manufacturing 
processes  and  expenses  thereby  ensured;  and,  on 
the  information  thus  obtained  (in  order  never 
again  to  revert  to  the  old-time  profiteering)  of 
the  present  rigid  fixing,  for  standardized  prod- 
ucts, of  maximum  prices  at  the  factory,  at  the 
warehouse  of  the  wholesale  trader,  and  in  the  re- 
tail shop." 

It  is  noticeable  that  this  program  leans  further 
to  unqualified  State  socialism  than  one  might  have 
expected  from  the  growth  in  Great  Britain  of  the 
idea  of  "industrial  autonomy."  State  control 
should  never  be  regarded  as  synonymous  with 
"industrial  democracy,"  but,  apart  from  one  or 
two  very  incidental  references  to  joint  control, 
there  is  nothing  in  this  section  of  the  report  to 
suggest  that  they  are  not  identical.  The  "effec- 
tive personal  freedom"  for  which  it  pleads  is  not 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   113 

spontaneously  generated  in  industry  through  gov- 
ernment ownership  and  control;  in  fact  the  con- 
trary is  the  case,  unless,  as  never  before,  decen- 
tralization and  direct  participation  of  the  employe 
in  management  is  assured.  How  to  attain  these 
necessary  conditions  of  the  "democratic  control 
of  industry"  is  lightly  passed  over  in  this  other- 
wise so  trenchant  report.  In  this  respect  the  re- 
port bears  witness  to  the  draughtsmanship  of  a 
distinguished  "Fabian"  author  who  has  always 
leaned  more  to  centralization  than  to  "effective 
freedom." 

Next  the  now  tremendous  problem  of  taxation 
is  envisaged.  "For  the  raising  of  the  greater  part 
of  the  revenue  now  required  the  Labor  Party 
looks  to  the  direct  taxation  of  the  incomes  above 
the  necessary  cost  of  family  maintenance;  and, 
for  the  requisite  effort  to  pay  off  the  national 
debt,  to  the  direct  taxation  of  private  fortunes 
both  during  life  and  at  death."  It  is  claimed, 
not  without  justification,  that  direct  taxation  as 
against  indirect  is  in  accord  with  "the  very  defi- 
nite teachings  of  economic  science."  It  is  here, 
too,  that  the  claim  is  made  of  the  common  inter- 


114  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

est  which  the  artisan  has  with  four-fifths  of  the 
nation. 

Finally,  the  Report  deals  with  those  forms  of 
economic  "surplus"  which  long  ago  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  economic  theorist  and  have  more 
recently  become  at  once  the  instigation  and  the 
object  of  attack  of  the  social  reformer.  "We 
have  allowed  the  riches  of  our  mines,  the  rental 
value  of  the  lands  superior  to  the  margin  of  culti- 
vation, the  extra  profits  of  the  fortunate  capital- 
ists, even  the  material  outcome  of  scientific  dis- 
coveries— which  ought  by  now  to  have  made  this 
Britain  of  ours  immune  from  class  poverty  or 
from  any  widespread  destitution — to  be  absorbed 
by  individual  proprietors;  and  then  devoted  very 
largely  to  the  senseless  luxury  of  an  idle  rich 
class."  This  surplus  is  to  be  secured  for  the  com- 
munity. Out  of  it  comes — as  indeed  it  must  come 
— the  new  capital  which  the  community  needs  for 
the  carrying  out  of  enterprises.  From  this  also 
must  be  directly  defrayed  the  cost  of  the  condi- 
tions of  communal  welfare,  education,  recreation, 
social  insurance,  public  provision  for  the  sick  and 
the  infirm,  the  aged  and  the  victims  of  accident 
and  disease.  "From  the  same  source  must  come 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   115 

the  greatly  increased  public  provision  that  the 
Labor  Party  will  insist  on  being  made  for  scien- 
tific investigation  and  original  research,  in  every 
branch  of  knowledge,  not  to  say  also  for  the  pro- 
motion of  music,  literature  and  fine  art,  which 
have  been  under  capitalism  so  greatly  neglected, 
and  upon  which,  so  the  Labor  Party  holds,  any 
real  development  of  civilization  fundamentally  de- 
pends. Society,  like  the  individual,  does  not  live 
by  bread  alone."  And  the  document  concludes 
with  the  remarkable  words:  "If  law  is  the 
mother  of  freedom,  science,  to  the  Labor  Party, 
must  be  the  parent  of  law." 

It  is  interesting  to  reflect  how  impossible  it 
would  have  been  for  such  words  to  have  emanated 
from  British  labor,  then  outlawed  and  unorgan- 
ized, a  hundred  years  ago.  While  to  many  of 
us,  habituated  to  more  near-thoughted  courses  and 
restrained  by  attendant  timidities  and  scruples, 
these  proposals  may  appear  extreme,  it  is  most 
instructive  to  contrast  them  in  this  regard  with 
the  destructive  denunciations  which  emanate  from 
Marxian  socialism.  The  comparison  illumines 
the  distinction  drawn  in  Chapter  IV  between  the 
narrowed  and  the  widened  views  of  labor.  Here 


n6  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

is  the  first  great  triumph  of  the  widened  view. 
The  Marxist  policy  contemplates  a  reversed  domi- 
nation of  class  over  class,  but  the  policy  of  this 
Labor  Party  is  professedly  national  in  the  best 
sense.  It  more  than  once  repudiates  the  sugges- 
tion that  its  program  is  a  "class"  program,  and  in- 
deed no  program  can  fairly  be  so  described,  though 
inevitably  it  would  alter  class  relations  and  modify 
class  privileges,  if  men  are  striving  honestly  there- 
by for  the  "building  up  of  the  community  as  a 
whole." 

II 

Not  less  significant,  though  naturally  more  re- 
stricted in  their  sweep,  are  the  new  plans  for  in- 
dustrial reform  made  or  adopted  by  the  British 
Government.  Where  labor  "gets  busy"  we  may 
expect  government  to  "get  busy,"  too.  I  do 
not  propose  to  describe  here  the  various  policies 
projected  to  meet  the  crisis,  but  one  of  these  is 
so  simple,  so  comprehensive,  and,  as  a  government 
program,  so  novel,  that  it  offers  an  experiment  of 
world-wide  interest.  It  is  designed  to  solve  the 
hardest  industrial  problem  of  all,  the  establish- 
ment of  a  better  system  of  relations  between  em- 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    117 

ployers  and  employed.     This  is  the  already  fa- 
mous "Whitley  plan." 

A  sub-committee  of  the  Reconstruction  Com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  consider  the  question  of 
better  industrial  relations.  It  was  composed  of 
certain  representatives  of  employers  and  em- 
ployes respectively,  some  professed  economists, 
and  a  few  others  who  were  in  touch  with  the  situ- 
ation, including  two  women.  This  body,  in  spite 
of  its  mixed  character,  issued  a  unanimous  report, 
now  named,  after  the  chairman  of  the  Commit- 
tee, the  WKitley  Report.1  It  is  delightfully 
and  strategically  short,  no  more  than  an  outline 
of  the  general  organization  which  must  exist  to 
ensure  the  application  of  certain  broad  principles 
to  industry.  These  principles  had  already  found 
some  advocacy.  They  had  recently  been  put  for- 
ward explicitly  by  a  master  builder  of  London, 
Mr.  Malcolm  Sparkes,  under  the  form  of  an  "in- 
dustrial parliament"  to  regulate  his  own  trade. 
They  had  actually  been  put  into  application  in  the 
Painters'  and  Decorators'  branch  of  that  trade, 
with  distinct  success  as  it  appeared.  They  had 

1  More  correctly,  the  First  Interim  Report,  on  Joint  Stand- 
ing Industrial  Councils,  of  the  Subcommittee  on  Relations  be- 
tween Employers  and  Employes. 


ii8  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

been  recommended  by  the  Commission  on  "Labor 
Unrest  in  Great  Britain,"  whose  findings  lay  be- 
fore the  Whitley  Committee.  One  of  the  general 
conclusions  of  that  Commission  ran  thus :  "Labor 
should  take  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  community  as 
partners  rather  than  as  servants." 

The  new  plan  is  introduced  as  follows:  "In 
the  interests  of  the  community  it  is  vital  that  after 
the  war  the  cooperation  of  all  classes,  established 
during  the  war,  should  continue,  and  more  es- 
pecially with  regard  to  the  relations  between  em- 
ployers and  employed.  For  securing  improve- 
ment in  the  latter,  it  is  essential  that  any  proposals 
put  forward  should  offer  to  work  people  the  means 
of  attaining  improved  conditions  of  employment 
and  a  higher  standard  of  comfort  generally,  and 
involve  the  enlistment  of  their  active  and  continu- 
ous cooperation  in  the  promotion  of  industry. 

"To  this  end,  the  establishment  for  each  indus- 
try of  an  organization,  representative  of  employ- 
ers and  workpeople,  to  have  as  its  object  the  regu- 
lar consideration  of  matters  affecting  the  progress 
and  wellbeing  of  trade  from  the  point  of  view  of 
all  those  engaged  in  it,  so  far  as  this  is  consist- 
ent with  the  general  interest  of  the  community, 


appears  to  us  necessary."  The  plan  suggested 
consists  of  a  system  of  "joint  standing  industrial 
councils  in  the  several  industries,  composed  of 
representatives  of  employers  and  employed." 
These  national  councils  would  have  very  wide 
competence,  not  only  in  jrespect  of  immediate 
questions  of  demobilization  and  the  restoration 
of  industry,  but  also  in  respect  of  the  permanent 
problems  of  industrial  welfare,  conditions  of  em- 
ployment, adjustment  of  wages,  removal  of  dis- 
putes, provision  of  technical  training,  of  industrial 
research,  improvement  of  processes,  protection 
of  workers  in  the  matters  of  earnings  and  em- 
ployment, safeguarding  of  their  rights  in  the  in- 
ventions and  improvements  they  may  discover  and 
so  on.  The  national  councils  would  be  supple- 
mented by  district  councils  and  workshop  com- 
mittees, also  composed  of  representatives  of  both 
sides,  to  deal  with  subordinate  questions  and 
special  applications  of  general  policy. 

Two  further  paragraphs  of  the  Report  are  very 
significant.  "It  appears  to  us,"  say  the  Commit- 
tee, "that  it  may  be  desirable  at  some  later  stage 
for  the  State  to  give  the  sanction  of  law  to  agree- 
ments made  by  the  councils,  but  the  initiative  in 


120  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

this  direction  should  come  from  the  councils  them- 
selves." The  importance  of  this  statement  has 
scarcely  been  recognized.  The  industrial  coun- 
cils are  conceived  as  potentially  law-making  bodies. 
This  goes  right  in  the  face  of  the  accredited  theory 
of  territorial  sovereignty,  indivisibly  centered  in 
one  all-competent  (and  therefore  all-incompetent) 
parliament.  It  is  a  direct  approach  to  the  princi- 
ple of  degrees  and  kinds  of  sovereignty,  so  ably 
advocated  by  a  rising  school  of  political  scientists, 
and  in  particular  applied  to  industry  by  the  guild 
socialists.  (The  latter,  it  is  true,  will  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  Whitley  plan,  having  their  rea- 
sons for  not  believing  that  "half  a  loaf  is  better 
than  no  bread".)  The  application  of  this  idea 
would  be  a  wedge  in  the  principle  of  centralized 
government,  and  is  in  harmony  with  the  growing 
conviction  that  central  parliaments  and  cabinets 
are  overworked  and  underspecialized,  and  inade- 
quate to  the  enormous  complexity  of  modern  in- 
dustry. 

The  other  paragraph  says:  "We  are  con- 
vinced that  a  permanent  improvement  in  the  rela- 
tions between  employers  and  employed  must  be 
founded  upon  something  other  than  a  cash  basis. 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   121 

What  is  wanted  is  that  the  workpeople  should 
have  a  greater  opportunity  of  participating  in  the 
discussion  about  and  adjustment  of  those  parts  of 
industry  by  which  they  are  most  affected."  The 
"cash-nexus,"  as  Carlyle  called  it,  will  never  bring 
peace  between  the  warring  parties,  and  it  is  well 
for  human  nature  that  this  is  so.  The  general 
failure  of  "profit-sharing"  schemes  bears  out  this 
truth.  The  cash-nexus  will  never  bring  content- 
edness  to  labor,  so  long  as  it  is  excluded  from  a 
voice  in  the  determination  of  its  fate,  so  long  as 
it  is  merely  a  hireling. 

The  Whitley  Report  was  adopted  without  de- 
lay by  the  Government.  It  sent  copies  to  the  vari- 
ous trade-unions  and  employers'  associations,  re- 
questing their  views,  and  the  replies,  from  the 
great  majority  on  both  sides,  were  very  favor- 
able. The  British  Minister  of  Labor  issued  a 
circular  on  the  subject,  stating  that  the  national 
councils  are  to  be  recognized  as  "official  standing 
Consultative  Committees  on  all  future  questions 
affecting  the  industries  which  they  represent,"  and 
that  they  will  constitute  the  "normal  channel 
through  which  the  experience  of  an  industry  will 
be  sought  on  all  questions  with  which  the  Indus- 


122  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

try  is  concerned."  The  Government  is  undoubt- 
edly in  earnest  in  its  acceptance  of  the  plan. 
What  seems  to  impress  the  Government  most  is  the 
advantage  which  accrues  from  its  being  able  to 
deal  directly  with  a  single  organization  represent- 
ing a  whole  industry,  instead  of  with  a  number  of 
crossing  and  conflicting  authorities.  The  exist- 
ence of  these  new  organizations  would  have 
greatly  eased  its  problem  of  harnessing  industry 
for  war,  and  it  contemplates  that  their  establish- 
ment will  greatly  aid  its  work  in  the  period  of  re- 
adjustment. Accordingly  it  has  set  itself  to  pro- 
mote the  formation  of  these  councils.  At  first 
the  process  of  establishment  was  slow,  but 
latterly  considerable  progress  has  been  made.  In 
a  number  of  industries,  including  the  building 
trades,  the  furniture  trade,  the  heavy  chemicals 
industry,  the  rubber  manufacturing  industry,  the 
baking  industry,  and  others,  the  councils  are  al* 
ready  in  full  operation. 

A  remarkable  development  along  similar  lines, 
forming  a  crown  to  the  Whitley  plan,  is  the  pro- 
posed National  Industrial  Council  unanimously 
recommended  by  a  most  representative  Joint  Com- 
mittee of  English  labor  leaders  and  employers,  to 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   123 

be  a  general  parliament  for  all  industry,  "to  secure 
the  largest  possible  measure  of  joint  action  be- 
tween the  representative  organizations  of  employ- 
ers and  workpeople,  and  to  be  the  normal  channel 
through  which  the  opinion  and  the  experience  of 
industry  will  be  sought  by  the  Government  on  all 
questions  affecting  industry  as  a  whole." 

The  application  of  the  Whitley  plan  is  a  crucial 
experiment  in  industry.  Its  success  or  failure  will 
profoundly  affect  all  future  developments.  It 
proposes  a  via  media  between  the  existing  auto- 
cratic control  and  such  revolutionary  systems  as 
either  the  new  or  the  older  socialism  advocates. 
What  then,  on  the  brink  of  this  experiment,  can 
we  surmise  about  its  chances  of  success? 

The  plan,  though  not  revolutionary,  is  in  con- 
trast with  the  existing  order  radical.  This  at  any 
rate  is  the  first  condition  of  success.  Whether 
in  fear  from  a  forecast  of  the  chaos  that  will 
otherwise  ensue,  or  in  hope  from  a  vision  of  a  bet- 
ter industrial  order  than  we  have  known  before, 
all  men  with  any  claim  to  statesmanship  perceive 
the  need  of  a  new  understanding,  a  new  relation- 
ship in  industry.  Of  course  there  are  always  with 
us  the  "practical  men"  who  speak  of  all  such 


124  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

plans  as  "ideal"  and  "visionary."  The  motto  of 
such  people  is  that  what  has  not  been  cannot  be. 
Every  day  something  happens  to  give  them  the  lie, 
but  they  still  repeat,  with  perfect  composure,  their 
ancient  f  ormulas.  They  have  been  repeating  them 
since  the  Stone  Age,  and  if  other  men  had  listened, 
the  world  would  still  be  in  the  Stone  Age.  Least 
of  all  does  it  become  the  leaders  of  labor  to  echo 
that  parrot  cry,  for  all  that  labor  has  so  far  gained 
was  first  scouted  as  "impractical." 

Again,  the  plan  is  definitely  based  upon  the  ex- 
isting organization  of  labor  as  of  capital.  This  is 
made  particularly  explicit  in  the  later  explanatory 
reports  of  the  Committee,  which  refuse  to  recom- 
mend the  establishment  of  Whitley  Councils  for 
industries  lacking  adequate  union  organization. 
This  important  provision  differentiates  the  Whit- 
ley  plan  from  such  methods  of  organization  as  the 
Rockefeller  plan.  It  is  a  wise  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  labor  organization  is  a  necessary  founda- 
tion of  industrial  order,  and  that  no  scheme  of 
bringing  labor  and  capital  together  can  be  expected 
to  succeed  which  cuts  across  or  in  any  degree  de- 
flects the  allegiance  of  the  worker  to  unionism. 

Such  little  experience  as  there  is  of  the  working 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   125 

of  a  scheme  of  this  kind  appears  so  far  to  justify 
the  hopes  of  its  promoters.  Where  it  has  been 
already  applied,  as  in  the  decorators'  industry 
in  Great  Britain,  it  is  stated  to  have  induced  a 
spirit  of  harmony  and  cooperation  unknown  be- 
fore. The  general  favor  which  the  plan  has  re- 
ceived alike  from  employers  and  employes  is  a 
good  augury.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  em- 
ployers and  employes  together  are  bound  up  in 
a  system  for  which  neither  can  be  held  responsible, 
that  many  of  the  former  too  would  gladly  break 
its  fetters,  and  that  the  waste,  material  and  human, 
of  the  system,  is  disadvantageous  to  the  majority 
of  both  classes. 

It  would,  however,  be  unwise  to  expect  too 
much  from  this  single  scheme.  Perhaps  part  of 
the  welcome  accorded  to  the  Report  is  due  to  its 
generality.  It  is  not  difficult  to  discover  causes 
of  disagreement  which  may  appear  within  the 
councils.  The  fundamental  differences  of  inter- 
est between  capital  and  labor  as  at  present  consti- 
tuted are  not  abolished  by  bringing  them  together 
in  permanent  joint  consultation,  or  even  joint  di- 
rection. Over  these  fundamental  differences  the 
Whitley  scheme  throws  no  bridge  whatever.  For 


126  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

we  must  always  remember  that  the  profounder 
problem  is  not  the  relation  of  the  management 
as  such  to  employes  as  such.  That  exists  under 
cooperative  as  much  as  under  "capitalistic"  pro- 
duction. The  profounder  problem  is  one  of  dis- 
tribution not  of  production.  It  is  one,  not  of  re- 
lation of  employer  to  employe,  but  of  capital  to 
labor.  It  is  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  profits, 
interest,  and  rent  to  wages.  So  long  as  the  capi- 
talist regards  labor  as  a  necessary  cost,  so  long 
as  the  worker  regards  interest,  rent,  and  profits  as 
deductions  from  the  wealth  which  he  creates,  that 
unsettled  question  is  a  flaming  sword  which  cleaves 
their  interests  apart.  This  is  not  a  condemnation 
of  the  Whitley  plan,  but  a  statement  of  its  per- 
haps inevitable  limitations. 

In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  note  that,  while 
the  interim  reports  of  the  Whitley  Committee 
were  unanimous,  the  final  report  reveals  a  distinct 
cleavage  of  opinion  on  a  fundamental  issue.  Five 
members  of  the  Committee,  out  of  the  fifteen  who 
sign  the  Report,  do  so  subject  to  a  certain  reser- 
vation. They  say:  "By  attaching  our  signa- 
tures to  the  general  reports  we  desire  to  render 
hearty  support  to  the  recommendations  that  In- 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   127 

dustrial  Councils  or  Trade  Boards,  according  to 
whichever  are  the  more  suitable  in  the  circum- 
stances, should  be  established  for  the  several  in- 
dustries or  businesses,  and  that  these  bodies,  repre- 
sentative of  employers  and  employed,  should  con- 
cern themselves  with  the  establishment  of  mini- 
mum conditions  and  the  furtherance  of  the  com- 
mon interests  of  their  trades. 

"But  while  recognizing  that  the  more  amicable 
relations  thus  established  between  capital  and  la- 
bor will  afford  an  atmosphere  generally  favorable 
to  industrial  peace  and  progress,  we  desire  to  ex- 
press our  view  that  a  complete  identity  of  inter- 
ests between  capital  and  labor  cannot  be  thus  ef- 
fected, and  that  such  machinery  cannot  be  expected 
to  furnish  a  settlement  for  the  more  serious  con- 
flicts or  interest  involved  in  the  working  of  an 
economic  system  primarily  governed  and  directed 
by  motives  of  private  profit." 

There  are  numerous  minor  difficulties  involved 
in  the  constitution  of  the  councils,  in  the  selection 
of  representatives,  in  the  determination  of  the 
powers  of  the  joint  boards,  and  so  on.  It  looks 
as  if  the  basis  of  national  councils  must  first  be 
laid  by  the  establishment  of  the  "Works  Com- 


128  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

mittee,"  and  it  is  significant  that  the  Whitley 
Committee  is  turning  its  attention  more  especially 
in  that  direction.  The  report  recently  issued  on 
"Works  Committees"  by  the  British  Ministry  of 
Labor  is  most  illuminating.  It  reveals  the  wide 
variety  and  range,  the  great  need  and  service, 
but  also  the  serious  difficulties  of  these  boards. 
One  of  these  difficulties  is  the  relation  of  the 
Works  Committee  to  the  trade-unions,  which  dare 
not  allow  themselves  to  be  weakened  by  this  new 
authority.  Another  is  the  assignment  of  powers 
to  them — are  they  merely  consultative  or  can 
they  have  any  direct  share  in  the  actual  manage- 
ment of  works?  "It  would  appear,"  says  the  re- 
port in  question,  "that  the  functions  of  a  Works 
Committee  are  practically  always  consultative. 
Usually  a  Works  Committee  can  bring  matters 
before  the  management  and  discuss  them  with  the 
management;  it  can  press  its  views  about  these 
matters  on  the  management ;  in  the  last  report,  it 
can  induce  the  Trade  Union  organization  to  call 
a  strike.  But  the  Works  Committee  cannot 
usually,  as  such,  carry  its  views  into  action,  or 
ensure  that  they  shall  be  carried  into  action,  by 
any  direct  machinery.  The  management  has  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN   129 

executive  power,  and  unless  the  management  is 
impressed  by  the  representations  of  the  members 
of  the  committee,  or  by  the  sanction  that  lies  be- 
hind them,  those  representations  will  not  lead  to 
executive  action.  This  would  appear  to  be  usual 
even  where  the  Works  Committee  is  a  Joint  Com- 
mittee. There  are,  indeed,  certain  cases  in  which 
the  decision  of  a  majority  of  the  members  of  such 
a  Joint  Committee  is  carried  into  effect.  This  is 
so  in  the  Pit-head  and  certain  other  committees 
which  have  the  power  to  fine  bad  time-keepers; 
and  in  certain  engineering  establishments  the 
question  of  prosecuting  bad  time-keepers  before 
the  Munitions  Tribunal  is  decided  by  Joint  Works 
Committees.  But  so  far  as  can  be  discovered, 
the  general  custom  is  to  the  contrary.  Unanimity 
must  be  attained;  the  management  must  be  con- 
vinced, and  both  sides  must  freely  agree  together, 
before  executive  action  is  taken.  The  operation 
of  a  Joint  Committee  is  really  in  the  nature  of 
consultation  between  two  parties — consultation 
which,  if  it  result  in  unanimity,  results  in  action, 
but  not  otherwise.  It  would  be  a  mistake  to  think 
in  terms  of  voting,  or  to  think  that  even  if  there 
ia  voting,  its  result  is  a  formal  decision  by  a  ma- 


130  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

jority  vote.  What  happens  is  rather  discussion 
by  which  misunderstanding  is  often  removed  and 
upon  which,  if  unanimity  is  attained  between  the 
two  sides,  action  will  ensue.  It  follows,  there- 
fore, that  generally  we  cannot  speak  of  Joint  Com- 
mittees, if  by  Joint  Committees  we  understand 
joint  executive  councils  acting  by  the  vote  of  the 
majority.  On  the  other  hand  there  are  Joint 
Committees,  if  by  Joint  Committees  we  under- 
stand deliberate  meetings  of  both  sides,  always 
attended  by  both  sides,  though  often  accompanied 
by  separate  meetings  of  the  two  sides"  (pp.  27-8). 
Another  difficult  question  is  the  relation  of  the 
joint  committee  to  the  workers'  committees  now 
growing  common  in  British  industry — which  will 
succeed  better,  a  regular  joint  board  or  a  commit- 
tee of  workers  having  regular  access  to  the  man- 
agement? The  latter  is  the  general  practice,  and 
seems  to  be  more  in  accordance  with  the  present 
stage  of  industrial  development.  Perhaps  the 
most  serious  of  all  these  practical  difficulties  is 
the  position  and  security  of  the  chosen  representa- 
tives of  the  workers  in  their  new  relation  to  the 
management.  The  Report  on  Works  Commit- 
tees contains  a  working  miner's  statement  on  the 


RECONSTRUCTION  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN    fti 

subject  which  is  worth  quoting  for  the  light  it 
throws  upon  the  workers'  own  interpretation  of 
the  difficulty  in  this  particular  industry.  Refer- 
ring to  the  work  of  the  mining  "output  commit- 
tees," he  says:  "The  rules  give  the  men  a  voice 
in  the  management,  but  I  am  sorry  to  say  there  is 
no  Committee  strong  enough  to  administer  the 
rules  as  it  relates  to  management :  they  go  so  far 
but  stop  as  they  see  an  invisible  pressure  being 
brought  upon  them  which  is  going  to  affect  the 
security  of  their  living,  a  kind  of  victimization 
which  you  cannot  prove.  Your  contracting  place 
is  finished  and  you  want  another  place,  but  the 
management  sends  you  'odding';  you  are  middle- 
aged  and  you  cannot  keep  pace  with  the  younger 
element;  and  you  look  after  a  fresh  place,  but 
everywhere  is  full  up ;  and  when  you  come  out  of 
the  office  you  can  see  other  men  set  on.  This  is 
what  is  going  on  all  around  the  district,  and  you 
want  to  strengthen  these  men  by  having  the  rules 
enacted  by  Act  of  Parliament  to  make  them  bind- 
ing; and  if  cases  like  this  happen,  there  wants  to 
be  a  Tribunal  appointed  by  Government,  repre- 
sentative of  all  classes  so  that  a  man  shall  have 
a  fair  hearing  and  equality  of  justice;  this  will 


132  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

give  him  a  security  and  it  will  reduce  this  insecur- 
ity of  work."  (Pp.  119-120.) 

These  serious  difficulties  may  be,  as  already  in 
some  cases  they  have  been,  overcome,  where  both 
sides  are  in  earnest  in  participating  in  the  scheme. 
What  emerges  most  clearly  is  the  necessity  for 
such  committees  under  the  new  conditions  of  in- 
dustry. It  is  noteworthy  that  as  conditions  grow 
more  complex,  as,  for  example,  piece-work  in  en- 
gineering takes  increasingly  the  place  of  time- 
work,  the  establishment  of  Workers'  Commit- 
tees is  found  necessary.  Here  is  one  agency 
whereby  the  rigor  of  trade-union  uniformity  may 
be  by  consent  and  under  safeguard  mitigated,  and 
the  ironic  necessity  dispelled  which  causes  labor 
to  resist  the  increase,  through  the  applications  of 
science,  of  the  means  whereby  it  lives. 

This  much  appears  to  me  to  be  certain,  that 
the  Report  is  based  on  principles  which  must,  in 
this  way  or  another,  be  applied  if  industrial  rela- 
tions are  to  be  improved;  and  that,  whatever  its 
later  fate,  the  adoption  of  this  scheme  can  be  of 
the  greatest  service  in  tiding  over  the  first  peril- 
ous transition  period  after  the  war. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LIONS   IN  THE   PATH 

Forces  in  the  established  order  which  oppose 
beneficent  change.  The  individualistic  tradi- 
tion of  the  law.  Anachronistic  attitude  to- 
wards competition.  The  courts  in  relation 
to  labor. 

The  entrenched  power  of  consolidated 
wealth.  The  economic  oligarchy  and  the 
economic  system.  Control  over  the  political 
machine  and  over  the  agencies  of  public 
opinion. 


ANY  new  order  of  industry,  through  which  the 
human  wastefulness  of  the  present  order  can  be 
removed,  must  involve  a  serious  disturbance  of  es- 
tablished interests.  It  is  well  to  understand  the 
difficulties  blocking  the  line  of  advance.  In  this 
brief  survey,  these  can  be  suggested  rather  than 
described,  and  there  is  danger,  in  a  summary  re- 
view, of  wrong  emphasis  and  too  sweeping  judg- 
ments. But  it  is  in  full  view  of  these  difficulties 

133 


134   LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

that  any  successful  efforts  towards  reconstruction 
must  be  made. 

There  are  certain  assumptions  underlying  the 
argument  which  it  is  well  to  make  explicit.  I 
assume  in  the  first  place  that  any  system  which 
gives  to  any  class  or  section  or  interest,  large  or 
small,  uncontrolled  power  over  others,  is  danger- 
ous to  the  commonwealth.  I  assume  that  the 
progress  of  civilization  depends  upon,  and  has  al- 
ways been  marked  by,  the  emancipation  from  arbi- 
trary control  of  those  hitherto  subject  to  it,  not 
because  the  latter  are  superior  in  any  sense,  but 
because  a  relation  of  servitude  is  inherently  evil, 
perverting  the  human  quality  of  either  side.  I 
assume  that  wealth  and  poverty  are  inter-related 
and  socially  conditioned.  I  assume  that  irre- 
sponsible wealth,  in  its  upliftedness  and  superfluity, 
is  pernicious  to  the  possessor  and  to  those  his 
wealth  commands;  and  that  all  essential  poverty, 
in  its  dejectedness  and  deprivation,  in  its  denuda- 
tion of  opportunity,  and  in  its  diseaseful  fecundity, 
is  an  evil  not  only  to  the  poor  but  to  the  whole 
community.  I  assume  that  any  reordering  of  so- 
ciety which  mitigated  the  extremes  of  inequality 
would,  if  safeguarded  from  social  reactions  of 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  135 

a  harmful  nature,  lead  to  a  better  utilization  of 
that  wealth  and  to  the  greater  happiness  of  man- 
kind. I  assume  finally  that  in  the  present  break- 
ing system  labor  is  in  general  a  subject  class,  and 
that  many  of  the  children  of  labor  are  deprived, 
by  economic  necessity,  of  the  opportunity  to  de- 
velop, for  their  own  and  the  common  good,  their 
natural  powers. 

These  assumptions  imply  no  comparison,  for 
better  or  worse,  of  class  with  class,  no  condemna- 
tion of  one  class  nor  exaltation  of  another.  They 
do  imply  the  indictment  of  a  system,  in  so  far  as, 
in  the  growing  consciousness  of  its  character  of 
good  and  evil,  it  is  seen  to  be  not  inevitable  but 
capable  of  reform.  What  is  most  clearly  evil  in 
it,  and  I  believe  most  amenable  to  change,  is  the 
relation  of  dominance  and  subservience  with  all 
the  waste  that  this  entails.  There  are  naturally 
certain  strong  influences  in  the  established  order 
which  act  to  maintain  that  relation.  These  are  the 
lions  on  the  path. 

Every  established  order  seeks,  though  always  in 
the  long  run  vainly,  to  immobilize  itself.  It 
stereotypes  customs  into  institutions,  and  fash- 
ions supporting  modes  of  thought  into  laws  and 


136  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

precedents  and  forms  of  education.  It  subtly  con- 
verts to  its  service  the  most  spiritual  forces, 
philosophy  and  religion,  and  enlists — though  these 
are  first  to  break  away — the  most  liberating  and 
creating  forces,  literature  and  art.  By  power  it 
wins  prestige,  then  turns  its  prestige  into  the 
foundation  of  its  power.  Thus  alike  for  the  good 
and  the  evil  in  it,  it  bids  for  immortality. 

The  first  bulwark  of  all  order  is  the  "law  of 
the  land."  It  not  only  prescribes  the  form  of 
order  which  regulates  society,  it  breathes  a  spirit. 
In  America  that  spirit  is  distinctly  hostile  to  the 
spirit  which  is  shaping  the  new  labor  situation. 

"The  great  and  chief  end  of  men's  uniting 
into  commonwealths,  and  putting  themselves  un- 
der government,  is  the  preservation  of  their 
property."  So  wrote  Locke  in  his  classical 
treatise  on  government.  It  was  an  expression  of 
the  frankly  materialistic  individualism  of  a  bygone 
age  which  yet  lives  on  in  the  American  courts  and 
most  wonderfully  in  the  American  'Constitution. 
It  is  at  war  with  the  ideal  of  labor  in  two  vital 
respects,  for  it  places  property  above  persons* 
and  it  venerates  the  competitive  principle.  A  few 
illustrations  must  here  suffice  by  way  of  justifica- 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  137 

tion  for  these  statements.  The  attitude  of  law 
towards  property  is  seen  perhaps  most  luminously 
in  the  principle  and  practice  of  the  injunction,  the 
characteristic  modern  development  of  the  old 
legal  doctrine  of  conspiracy.  An  injunction  is  ex- 
pressly issued  to  protect  property  against  threat- 
ened danger.  This  danger  may  of  course  arise 
from  a  strike,  more  especially  as  market  expect- 
ancies become  recognized  as  "property,"  and  the 
courts  have  issued  a  vast  number  of  injunctions 
with  reference  to  strikes,  showing  quite  clearly 
that  they  viewed  these  disputes  solely  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  property  involved  and  not 
at  all  as  a  conflict  of  claims  by  which  some  in- 
direct property  loss  (often  negligible  compared 
with  the  direct  loss  sustained  by  the  non-proper- 
tied) is  merely  an  incidental  consequence.  The 
tremendous  range  of  the  injunction  was  well  illus- 
trated in  the  Buck's  Stove  and  Range  case,  which 
enjoined  "the  officers  of  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labor,  officers  and  members  of  affiliated 
unions,  agents,  friends,  sympathizers,  counsel, 
conspirators  and  co-conspirators  from  making  any 
reference  whatever  to  the  fact  that  the  Buck's 
Company  had  ever  been  in  any  dispute  with  labor, 


138  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

or  to  the  fact  that  the  Company  had  ever  been  re- 
garded as  unfair,  had  ever  been  on  any  unfair 
list,  or  on  a  'we  don't  patronize'  list  of  the  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor  or  of  any  other  organiza- 
tion, and  also  prohibited  any  person  from  either 
directly  or  indirectly  referring  to  any  such  con- 
troversy by  printed,  written  or  spoken  word." 
The  vast  scope  of  the  injunction  in  the  "blanket" 
form,  its  potency  to  arrest  otherwise  legitimate 
activities  during  its  continuance,  the  efficacy  of 
the  punishment  for  "contempt"  which  follows  its 
violation,  and  the  inability  to  obtain  juries  in  such 
cases,  have  combined  to  make  the  injunction,  un- 
der the  present  constitution  of  the  courts,  one  of 
the  most  formidable  enemies  of  a  new  industrial 
order.  If  further  proof  of  this  claim  were 
needed,  it  has  been  provided  by  the  recent  decision 
of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  case  of  the  Hitchman 
Coal  and  Coke  Company. 

The  law  would  hold  the  industrial  arena  clear 
for  competition.  Whatever  is  in  restraint  of 
trade  falls  under  its  ban.  Anachronistically  it  at- 
tempts to  stem  the  onward  movement  of  combina- 
tion. Capital  laughs  quietly  at  its  Canute-like 
attempts  to  stay  the  tide,  and  labor  has  in  part 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  139 

been  already  liberated  from  its  inclusion  under 
the  ban  of  trade-restraining  organizations.  But 
the  attitude  of  the  law  towards  competition  affects 
labor  more  profoundly  than  capital.  Capital  has 
effective  devices  for  evading  anti-monopolistic 
laws.  On  the  whole  these  have  changed  the  mode 
and  degree  rather  than  the  extent  of  capitalistic 
concentration.  Even  if  the  force  of  the  competi- 
tive principle  were  applied  equally  all  round,  it 
would  be  far  more  serious  to  labor  than  to  capital. 
For  the  weaker  side — and  labor  is  weaker  by  rea- 
son of  numbers,  it  is  weaker  in  prestige  and  in  re- 
sources no  less  than  in  representation  on  law-mak- 
ing and  law-adjudging  bodies — is  always  the  loser 
under  "free"  competition.  "Free"  competition  is 
death  to  the  ends  of  labor.  Under  it  the  weakest 
members  of  the  stronger  party  set  the  pace  for  all. 
The  grinding  "marginal"  employer  becomes  the 
most  effective  and  determinant  bargainer  for  his 
side,  being  capable  of  lowering  the  wage-rate  over 
a  whole  industry.  And  on  the  other  hand  the 
weakest  members  of  the  weaker  party  are  the 
least  effective,  but  still  determinant,  bargainers 
for  their  side,  compelling  all  of  the  same  status 
to  accept  a  lower  rate.  Here  is  the  great  irony 


i4o  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

of  the  much  lauded  competitive  principle.  Once 
it  is  understood  the  tremendous  disadvantage  be- 
comes plain  which  labor  suffers  under  a  system  of 
law  rooted  in  the  philosophy  of  competition. 

The  courts  not  only  apply  the  law,  they  also  in- 
terpret it.  They  must  exercise  discretionary 
power,  they  must  determine  motive  in  determin- 
ing breach  of  law,  and  thereby  inevitably  reveal 
their  own  natural  bias,  the  bias  of  the  code  and 
of  the  philosophy  that  underlies  the  code.  It  is 
easy  to  see,  and  easy  to  illustrate,  the  disadvan- 
tage labor  has  suffered  from  the  exercise  of  this 
discretion,  in  the  interpretation  of  such  phrases  as, 
for  example,  "wanton  and  malicious,"  "designed 
mainly  to  injure  the  employer,"  "sufficient  inter- 
est," "intimidation,"  "conspiracy,"  and  so  on. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  if  a  system  could  be  es- 
tablished whereby  the  decision  of  labor  cases  was 
entrusted  to  special  industrial  courts,  withdrawn 
from  the  operation  of  the  common  law  and  the 
formulae  and  precedents  of  ordinary  legal  usage, 
it  would  remove  much  of  the  infirmity  which  labor 
feels  in  presence  of  the  law. 

The  present  situation  is  well  expressed  in  the 
words  of  one  of  the  most  fair-minded  of  economic 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  141 

investigators,  the  later  Professor  Hoxie.  "The 
law,"  he  says,  "in  so  far  as  it  assumes  to  repre- 
sent the  essence  of  positive  justice  but  reflects  the 
relations  of  handicraft  industry,  has  no  compre- 
hension of  modern  industrial  conditions,  nor  of 
their  inevitable  consequences,  and  no  modes  of 
dealing  with  them  except  by  prohibition.  It  has 
no  comprehension  of  a  machinery  for  dealing  out 
justice  in  a  state  of  society  changed  and  chang- 
ing from  that  in  which  it  was  conceived.  Being 
actually  unable  to  outlaw  combination,  for  indus- 
trial forces  are  more  compelling  than  legal  re- 
straint, not  being  wholly  uncognizant  of  the  in- 
justice worked  by  its  arbitrary  decrees,  but  unable 
to  give  up  its  pre-evolutionary  standpoint,  it  is 
obliged  to  seek  actual  justice  by  shuffling,  halting, 
roundabout  methods  and  disingenuous  distinctions 
which  vary  with  the  intelligence  and  bias  of  the 
particular  courts.  As  the  law  in  spirit  is  indi- 
vidualistic, as  it  makes  the  freedom  and  sacred- 
ness  of  individual  contract  the  touchstone  of  abso- 
lute justice,  and  as  the  unions  are  formed  to  es- 
cape the  evils  of  individualism  and  individual 
competition  and  contract,  and  all  the  union  acts  in 
positive  support  of  these  purposes  do  involve  co- 


142  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ercion,  the  law  cannot  help  being  in  spirit  inimical 
to  unionism.  Unionism  is  in  its  very  essence  a 
lawless  thing,  in  its  very  purpose  and  spirit  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  law.  Hence,  even  where  the  judges 
are  understanding  and  intend  to  be  sympathetic 
to  unionism,  if  they  are  true  to  the  law  they  must 
tend  to  be  unfair  to  unionism." 

These  inequities  are  in  some  degree  inherent 
in  the  slow  process  of  legal  evolution  in  every 
land,  but  in  America  they  are  of  course  aggravated 
by  the  peculiar  authority  of  the  judicature  over 
the  legislature.  The  power  of  the  highest  State 
courts  and  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  to  declare  measures  "unconstitutional"  is 
directly  and  indirectly  a  most  formidable  deterrent 
of  political  adaptation  to  the  needs  of  a  chang- 
ing order.  This  is  now  too  obvious  to  require  in- 
sistence upon  it.  New  illustrations,  such  as  the  re- 
cent declaration  of  the  "unconstitutionally"  of  the 
Federal  Child  Labor  Law  are  constantly  being 
offered  to  confirm  the  evidence  of  history.  In  the 
great  upheaval  which  to-day  is  undermining  the 
political  traditions  of  the  older  lands  it  may  well 
be  that  America,  for  all  its  ostentation  of  De- 
mocracy, will  have  fallen  from  the  vanguard  to 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  143 

the  rearguard  of  political  advance.  For  a  compli- 
cated mechanism  may  prove  more  inexpugnable 
than  a  living  caste,  and  a  venerated  document  be 
harder  to  dethrone  than  dynasts  and  emperors. 

There  is  indeed  a  process  of  adaptation  that 
works  even  within  the  framework  of  antiquated 
forms.  I  do  not  wish  to  exaggerate  the  imper- 
meability of  the  law  and  the  constitution.  Not 
even  they  are  immune  from  the  transforming 
touch  of  time.  Interpretations  inspired  by  new 
needs  undermine  the  letter  of  the  ancient  law.  The 
wedge  of  collectivism,  its  thin  edge  the  protection 
of  "minors"  against  industrial  harm,  pierces  the 
individualism  of  the  code.  The  "police  power" 
of  the  State  is  successfully  invoked  to  save  many 
needed  measures  from  the  constitutional  guillo- 
tine. Acts  are  passed  expressly  safeguarding  anti- 
competitive organizations,  such  as  the  trade- 
unions,  from  outlawry.  The  Supreme  Court  it- 
self is  not  so  remote  from  changing  public  opin- 
ion that  it  does  not  register  its  influence.  One 
significant  indication  is  the  confirmation  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  constitutionality  of  the  Ore- 
gon laws  establishing  a  minimum  wage  and  a  ten- 
hour  day  respectively.  The  latter  decision  is  par- 


144  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ticularly  Interesting,  since  it  is  the  first  which  has 
expressly  vindicated  interference  with  the  "right 
of  contract  in  a  general  and  not  a  specific  appli- 
cation, and  since  also  it  is  in  contradiction  to  for- 
mer decisions,  such  as  that  which  declared  "un- 
constitutional" the  ten-hour  bakery  law  of  New 
York  as  "mere  meddlesome  interference  with  the 
rights  of  the  individual."  "It  is  impossible,"  says 
Mr.  Lindley  D.  Clark  in  a  review  of  these  de- 
cisions in  the  Monthly  Review  of  the  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics,  May,  1917,  "to  read  this  account 
without  recognizing  that  the  law  'is  to  some  extent 
a  progressive  science,'  and  that  changes  may  be 
expected  to  continue  in  it  as  they  have  occurred 
in  the  past."  Nevertheless  these  movements  are 
like  the  awkward  ever-impeded  steps  of  a  shack- 
led prisoner,  not  the  forward  motions  of  a  man 
who  freely  pursues  his  course.  It  is  hard  enough 
to  meet  unbound  the  conditions  imposed  by  the 
incessant  technical  change  of  modern  capitalistic 
industry,  but  bound  by  the  formulations  of  past 
centuries  it  becomes  a  Herculean  task. 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  145 

II 

In  old  mythologies  they  told  of  young  gods, 
strangely  born,  foreordained  to  compass  the  over- 
throw of  their  parent  deities.  Gifted  with  simi- 
lar parricidal  power,  new  forces  have  arisen  out 
of  the  welter  of  American  individualism,  their 
destined  task  the  dethronement  of  the  venerated 
God  of  competition  when  the  latter's  work  is  done. 
That  destiny  is  already  in  process  of  accomplish- 
ment. Every  conquest  within  the  competitive  field 
has  narrowed  that  field.  Every  device  learned 
and  practiced  in  the  competitive  struggle  has  been 
a  means  to  abrogate  or  to  transform  that  strug- 
gle. With  wonderful  success  the  victors  have 
gathered  power,  property,  and  prestige  to  shield 
them  from  further  assaults.  The  old  warfare  is, 
for  the  greater  victors,  past.  What  remains  for 
them  is  consolidation,  and  the  enjoyment  of  the 
ripening  spoils.  To  this  end,  having  destroyed 
competition  within,  they  acclaim  competition  with- 
out, and  in  particular  they  decry  all  "socialism" 
(within  which  term  they  comprehend  almost  any 
degree  of  State  regulation)  as  the  ruin  of  a  free 
Republic. 


146  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

The  entrenched  power  of  consolidated  wealth 
is  exercised  directly  over  industry,  and  indirectly 
over  government,  over  a  multitude  of  voluntary 
associations,  and  over  public  opinion.  With  this 
power  we  are  here  concerned  only  in  so  far  as  it 
is  used  to  stay  the  process  of  industrial  adaptation 
to  social  needs.  In  one  respect  this  power  is  itself 
the  revelation  of  consummate  adaptation,  for  it 
rests  on  combination  and  by  its  success  shows  how 
much  more  capable  to  survive  and  flourish  is  conv 
bination  than  its  natural  foes.  But  capitalistic 
combination,  like  some  savage  potentate,  would 
secure  by  fratricide  the  throne  it  won  by  parricide. 
That  is,  it  would  destroy  or  nullify  those  other 
forms  of  combination  which  are  also  being  shaped 
within  the  new  industrial  world,  and  which  are  the 
necessary  safeguards  against  its  own  great  power. 
In  particular,  it  attacks  the  more  effective  forms 
of  state  supervision  and  regulation,  and  it  deliber- 
ately attempts  to  suppress  the  growth  of  its  own 
direct  and  proper  counterpart,  the  organization  of 
labor  in  unions.  These  activities  imperil  the 
needed  reconstruction.  Here  indeed  is  the  great- 
est peril  that  lies  in  the  path,  the  opposition  of  the 
vast  pervasive  power  of  change-abhorring  wealth. 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  147 

This  power  is  both  direct  and  indirect,  and  a 
brief  survey  of  both  manifestations  will  indicate 
its  magnitude.  Directly,  it  is  the  autocrat  of  the 
whole  world  of  business.  In  respect  of  wealth, 
great  as  is  the  concentration  of  ownership,  it  is 
little  as  compared  with  the  concentration  of  con- 
trol. This  has  been  brought  about  not  only  by  the 
growth  of  industrial  and  commercial  corporations 
and  their  alliance  through  trusts,  voting  trusts, 
combines,  cartels,  trade  associations,  interlocking 
directorates,  rings  and  understandings  of  all 
kinds ;  but  still  more  through  certain  inner  develop- 
ments of  modern  finance.  One  of  these  is  the 
modern  banking  system,  under  which  the  banks, 
the  trust  companies,  insurance  companies,  and 
other  depositaries  of  the  funds  of  the  public,  all 
closely  interlinked,  determine  the  direction  in 
which  new  capital  shall  flow,  the  industrial  soil 
which  it  shall  fructify.  Another  is  the  central  con- 
trol of  values  as  recorded  on  the  Stock  Exchange. 
Wealth  is  ceasing  to  mean  ownership  of  concrete 
means  of  production  and  becoming  ownership  of 
claims  upon  production,  in  the  form  of  interest- 
bearing  bonds  and  dividend-bearing  shares  of 
stock.  These  have  transformed  capital  into  some- 


I48  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

thing,  for  the  ordinary  man,  uncannily  abstract, 
into  something  homogeneous  and  divisible,  readily 
transferable,  wonderfully  "sensitive"  and  "fluid." 
The  celerity  and  direction  of  its  flow  depends  on 
the  ups  and  downs  of  the  value  barometer,  and 
the  financial  "weather  men,"  who  sit  in  inner 
places,  have  prescience  and  partial  control  of  these 
fluctuations.  This  inside  knowledge,  combined  with 
such  devices  as  majority  holdings  of  common  stock 
and  interlocking  directorates,  gives  a  small  circle 
of  financial  power  a  certain  control  over  the  com- 
bined wealth  of  half  the  people. 

This  is  the  inmost  circle  of  a  wider  oligarchy, 
which,  by  its  increasing  control  over  prices,  would 
control,  among  other  things,  the  wages  of  labor. 
It  is  easy  to  see  how  this  power  over  prices  gives 
capital  a  great  advantage  in  the  struggle  with  la- 
bor. It  may  be  able  so  to  manipulate  profits 
that  demands  for  better  wages  or  conditions  ap- 
pear to  spell  disaster.  Or,  failing  that,  it  can  rep- 
resent wage-increases  as  additional  taxes  upon  the 
consumer,  and  indeed  ensure  that  they  shall  be 
such,  so  starting  a  vicious  (and  profitable)  cycle 
of  higher  prices,  which  in  time  makes  the  seeming 
gains  of  labor  specious  and  vain. 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  149 

We  must  at  the  same  time  remember  that  the 
economic  oligarchy  is  itself  the  result  of  the  eco- 
nomic system  which  it  in  part  controls.  The  sys- 
tem is  in  fact  more  powerful  than  the  oligarchy — 
a  truth  which  is  generally  applicable  to  political 
oligarchy  as  well.  Just  as  the  wage-system  dom- 
inates the  life  of  the  worker,  so  does  the  price- 
system  dominate  the  activity  of  the  employer.  The 
employer  is  impelled  to  secure  himself  as  far  as 
possible  against  the  dangers  of  the  speculative 
method  of  production,  against  the  constant  risk  of 
rising  costs  or  falling  prices,  against  the  loss  of 
his  market  through  competition  or  changes  in  de- 
mand, against  the  vagaries  of  the  business  cycle; 
and  in  the  process,  unless  he  occupies  a  peculiarly 
sheltered  position,  he  is  bound  to  exercise  over 
labor  whatever  control  he  can.  Capital  possesses 
certain  advantages  over  labor  which  by  its  very 
nature  it  is  bound  to  exploit — and  will  continue  to 
exploit  save  as  liberation  comes  through  the  devel- 
opment of  new  forces  strong  enough  to  change  the 
system  by  which  both  capital  and  labor  are  for  the 
present  bound. 

Labor  is  hired  by  capital  and  not  capital 
by  labor.  There  is  nearly  always  a  surplus  of 


150  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

labor  asking  capital  to  give  it  employment.  Labor 
is  "fired"  by  capital  and  never  capital  by  labor. 
The  determination  of  processes  as  well  as  of 
prices,  of  tasks  as  well  as  (though  no  longer 
wholly)  of  payments,  of  responsibilities  as  well 
as  of  rewards,  belongs  to  capital.  This  economic 
power,  above  all  the  power  of  dismissal,  is  a  means 
to  influence  the  policy  of  labor.  Just  as  the  small 
patriarchal  employer  of  old  times  often  applied 
his  economic  power  to  ensure  that  his  employe 
attend  church  or  voted  according  to  direction,  so 
the  great  modern  corporation  attempts  to  check 
what  it  regards  as  undesirable  tendencies  of 
thought  among  its  workers.  It  is  inevitable  that 
power  should  establish  its  advantage  in  these  ways, 
by  whatever  class  or  party  or  interest  the  power 
is  possessed.  But  in  the  times  of  reconstruction 
it  is  a  lion  in  the  path. 

In  respect  of  the  less  direct  forms  of  control, 
the  power  of  wealth  ramifies  so  far  into  every 
nook  and  cranny  of  the  social  structure  that  a  re- 
view of  this  kind  can  but  suggest  the  broader 
channels  of  its  exercise.  The  control  of  politics 
is  of  course  the  first  external  aim  of  economic 
power.  In  the  preceding  section  of  this  chapter 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  151 

I  have  indicated  how  great  is  the  advantage  which 
the  law  and  constitution  give  to  the  upholders  of 
the  status  quo.  This  is  reinforced  by  the  party 
system,  with  its  secret  machinery,  its  antiquated 
cumbrousness,  its  chicanery,  and  its  dependence  for 
funds  on  generosity,  however  motived.  It  is  by 
control  of  the  mechanism  of  the  party-system, 
from  the  small  wheels  managed  by  ward-bosses  up 
to  the  great  wheels  which  move  silently  in  Wash- 
ington, that  the  wealth  of  America  has  succeeded, 
in  such  large  measure,  in  translating  a  democrat- 
ically-minded nation  into  an  effective  plutocracy. 
In  the  United  States,  as  also  in  Canada,  wealth 
has  laid  its  hand  with  power  on  the  helm  of  the 
ship  of  State,  not  indeed  with  undisputed  author- 
ity, but  sufficiently  to  deflect  it  far  from  its  ap- 
pointed democratic  course.  The  plutocracy  does 
not  enter  politics  merely  to  defend  its  gains ;  to  win 
over,  by  fair  means  or  foul,  the  opponents  of  its 
interests,  not  excluding  leaders  of  labor,  to  ac- 
quire cheap  franchises,  exemptions  and  other 
privileges ;  it  offers  also,  through  its  political  serv- 
ants, a  national  policy.  It  is  a  policy  to  divert  at- 
tention from  national  welfare  to  national  bigness, 
from  the  needs  of  a  people  to  its  ambitions,  from 


152  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

intrinsic  fulfillment  to  the  vainglory  of  the  race- 
spirit.  It  is  a  policy  of  expansion,  of  combative 
protection,  a  policy  that  makes  appeal  to  the 
coarser  elemental  passions  which  steal  the  name  of 
patriotism. 

To  control  the  mechanism  of  politics  it  is  neces- 
sary also  in  some  degree  to  dominate  public  opin- 
ion: and  the  various  institutions  and  associations 
which  mold  that  opinion  are  thus  subject  to  strong 
persuasions.  An  institution  which  depends  on  the 
endowments  or  contributions  of  the  wealthy,  be  it 
philanthropic  association,  church,  or  university, 
is  in  some  peril  of  losing  its  free  spirit.  I  have 
heard  the  director  of  a  great  philanthropic  associ- 
ation confess  that  its  policy  must  not  offend  the 
prejudices  of  wealthy  donors.  Even  the  univer- 
sities have  not  lacked  ominous  signs  of  suppres- 
sion or  intolerance.  Teachers  have  been  dis- 
charged or  passed  over,  not  for  incompetence  but 
for  opinions  contrary  to  the  sentiments  of  a  gov- 
erning board.  The  issue  is  clearly  defined  in  the 
Report  on  Academic  Freedom  and  Academic  Ten- 
ure prepared  by  a  committee  of  the  American  As- 
sociation of  University  Professors.  It  contains 
the  significant  statement :  "In  the  early  period  of 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  153 

University  development  in  America  the  chief  men- 
ace to  academic  freedom  was  ecclesiastical,  and 
the  disciplines  chiefly  affected  were  philosophy 
and  the  natural  sciences.  In  more  recent  times 
the  danger  zone  has  been  shifted  to  the  political 
and  social  sciences."  Happily  the  spirit  of  in- 
tolerance does  not  prevail,  for  if  it  did,  all  the 
dignity,  all  the  inner  worth  and  meaning  of  the 
University  would  be  lost,  all  the  sustaining  happi- 
ness of  the  hard  search  for  truth,  which  yet,  to 
those  who  know  it,  is  more  than  compensation  for 
the  greater  material  rewards  of  other  professions, 
would  be  destroyed. 

But  it  is  the  more  immediate  agencies  and  stimu- 
lants of  opinion  which  organized  wealth  is  most 
anxious  to  control,  the  stage,  the  screen,  the  press 
— above  all,  the  press.  The  significance  of  the 
newspaper  and  periodical  in  making  as  distinct 
from  reflecting  public  opinion  is  well  understood 
by  all  the  rulers  of  man.  The  effect  of  its  ubiq- 
uitous suggestion,  poured  with  such  facility 
morning  and  afternoon,  spread  abroad  with  such 
rapidity,  finding  its  way  into  nearly  every  home, 
is  incalculable.  Its  double  armor  of  irresponsi- 
bility and  anonymity  renders  it  almost  invulner- 


154  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

able,  and  conveys  the  idea  of  some  impersonal 
force — as  if  it  were  the  mouthpiece  not  of  indi- 
vidual men  but  of  society  itself.  Even  if  the  press 
were  inexorably  truthful,  it  would  still,  if  con- 
trolled, be  dangerous :  for  the  power  of  selection 
which  it  exercises  is  a  more  subtle  determinant  of 
opinion.  Any  course  whatever  can  be  made  to  ap- 
pear noble  or  base  without  one  iota  of  direct  falsi- 
fication, according  as  the  bias  of  the  press  selects 
and  omits  and  gives  prominence  to  one  or  other  set 
of  facts  and  opinions.  By  this  means  the  press  can 
exercise  an  almost  hypnotic  influence  on  the  minds 
of  men.  Hence  there  is  a  vital  danger  to  democ- 
racy as  the  tendency  to  combination,  under  capital- 
istic control,  spreads  to  the  newspaper  world.  This 
applies  to  news  agencies  as  well  as  to  journals. 
The  former  have  a  more  pervasive  and  imper- 
sonal influence,  reaching  out  from  the  cheap  "boi- 
ler-plate" provided  for  country  newspapers  to  the 
special  reports  of  current  events.  There  have 
been  in  the  States  certain  cases  which  seem  to  sug- 
gest that  "the  interests)'  have  a  very  direct  influ- 
ence on  the  news  agencies.  It  is  claimed,  for  exam- 
ple, by  labor  that  the  press  agency  reports  of 
strikes  and  other  labor  disturbances,  such  as  those 


LIONS  IN  THE  PATH  155 

of  the  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Workers  and  the 
West  Virginia  miners,  are  one-sided  and  mislead- 
ing. A  contrast  is  drawn  between  the  publicity  giv- 
en to  the  McNamara  case  and  the  concerted  silence 
of  the  press  on  the  Mooney  case,  where  the  vindi- 
cation of  labor  instead  of  that  of  capital  was  in- 
volved. If  this  is  true,  it  becomes  a  public  danger 
of  the  gravest  kind.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  con- 
trol of  opinion  becomes  a  more  vital  concern  the 
more  a  country  develops  toward  democracy.  In- 
terests which  formerly  could  command  have  now 
to  persuade,  to  justify  themselves,  and  they  be- 
come on  that  account  eager  to  control  the  organ  of 
opinion. 

Fortunately,  this  last  lion  in  the  path  is,  like  the 
lion  of  the  child's  story-book,  unable  to  withstand 
the  "power  of  the  human  eye."  To  face  it,  to 
perceive  it,  is  to  overcome  it.  Eternal  vigilance 
is  here  also  the  price  of  democracy — and  there  are 
always  organs  of  opinion  strong  enough  and  fear- 
less enough  to  withstand  those  influences  and  to 
stimulate  that  necessary  vigilance.  To-day,  when 
the  world  is  sick  with  longing  for  a  new  and  bet- 
ter order,  it  is  more  necessary  than  ever  before. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD :  A  CONTRAST  IN 
LABOR  CONDITIONS 

The  extent  of  labor  organization  in  the  United 
Kingdom  and  in  America  respectively.  Why 
labor  in  America  has  been  politically  frus- 
trate. Emigration  versus  Immigration.  Other 
contrasts.  Differences  in  spirit  between  the 
old  world  and  the  new,  and  their  effects  on  the 
situation  of  labor. 

UP  to  the  present  there  has  not  been,  in  the 
United  States  or  Canada,  any  activity,  directed 
towards  the  improvement  of  industrial  relations, 
at  all  comparable,  in  breadth  and  seriousness,  with 
that  now  manifested  in  Great  Britain.  One  rea- 
son is  not  far  to  seek.  The  spiritual  disquietude 
of  the  war  was  slow  to  reach  these  shores.  There 
has  not  been  that  shock  to  the  sense  of  an  estab- 
lished order,  that  disturbance  of  all  complacencies, 
which  swept  the  countries  suddenly  and  completely 
drawn  into  the  maelstrom.  But  there  are  other 

reasons  besides  this,  reasons  inherent  in  the  great 

156 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD     >    157 

differences  between  new-world  and  old-world  con- 
ditions. It  is  indeed  sometimes  thought  that  these 
differences  render  unnecessary  the  more  heroic 
measures  advocated  or  planned  in  older  countries, 
that  we  can  get  along  without  any  great  modifica- 
tion of  the  existing  haphazard  relations  of  capi- 
tal and  labor.  I  do  not  read  in  this  way  the  signs 
of  the  times.  I  think  it  is  very  possible,  on  the 
contrary,  that  unless  adequate  thought  be  given  to 
it  and  preparation  made,  the  after-war  industrial 
situation  in  North  America  may  grow  at  least  as 
acute  as  in  Europe.  The  differences  are  real  and 
great,  but  some  of  them  aggravate  rather  than 
diminish  the  need  for  preparedness.  They  may 
prevent  the  application  by  us  of  old-world  solu- 
tions, but  they  make  more  imperative  the  quest  and 
discovery  of  our  own. 

It  is  worth  while,  therefore,  to  review  briefly 
the  chief  differences  in  question.  They  are  differ- 
ences of  organization  and  differences  of  spirit. 

Of  the  former  kind  the  most  obvious  is  the 
greater  development  of  labor  organization  in 
Great  Britain.  Taking  the  figures  for  the  last 
year  before  the  war  as  affording  the  fairest  basis 
for  comparison,  we  find  that  the  United  Kingdom 


158  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

had,  in  proportion  to  population,  more  than  three 
times  as  many  trade  unionists  as  America.  Al- 
lowance must  of  course  be  made  for  the  greater 
industrialization  of  Britain,  but  it  is  clear  that  the 
organization  of  labor  is  particularly  inadequate 
in  America.  This  failure  stands  in  the  way  of  all 
constructiveness.  It  would  be  difficult  to  work 
out,  say,  the  Whitley  plan  in  America,  for  that 
plan  depends  on  the  representation  of  the  work- 
ers on  industrial  councils,  and  without  organiza- 
tion there  can  scarcely  be  true  representation. 
Another  consequence  is  that  in  America  there  is 
not  the  same  complex  system  of  established  trade- 
union  rules  which  governed  labor  in  British  fac- 
tories and  workshops.  These  rules  are  double- 
edged.  Being  motived  by  a  distrust  of  capitalis- 
tic management,  a  distrust  born  of  past  experi- 
ence and  too  often  confirmed  by  existing  condi- 
tions, they  proved  a  serious  obstacle  to  industrial 
efficiency,  but  at  the  same  time  they  gave  to  the 
worker  a  certain  protection  here  unattained. 

The  growth  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  during  the  last  twenty  years,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  economic  conditions  which  have  gradu- 
ally established  here,  as  in  Europe,  a  distinctive 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD         159 

working  class  or  series  of  classes,  may  point  to- 
wards  a  coming  organization  of  labor  in  America 
comparable  with  that  already  attained  in  Great 
Britain. 

One  of  the  most  significant  differences  between 
American  and  English  labor  is  found  in  their  re- 
spective attitudes  towards  political  action.  In 
Great  Britain,  and  generally  in  Western  Europe, 
the  modern  development  of  trade  unionism  has 
gone  hand  in  hand  with  the  growth  of  a  political 
labor  party,  which,  whatever  its  weaknesses  and 
divisions,  has  at  any  rate  been  strong  enough  to 
influence  the  policies  of  the  traditional  parties. 
Already  in  Great  Britain  it  confidently  aspires  to 
victory  over  the  opposing  political  forces.  Where- 
as in  America  labor  has  been  politically  frustrate, 
neither  strong  enough  to  create  an  enduring  party 
of  its  own,  nor  united  enough  to  formulate  a  com- 
mon platform,  nor  influential  enough  to  affect  very 
seriously  the  policies  and  conflicts  of  the  older 
parties.  In  America  no  fierce  protracted  strug- 
gle for  the  elementary  right  to  vote  rallied  to  the 
cause  of  radicalism  a  whole  disfranchised  class; 
no  sacrosanct  association  of  landownership  and 
political  supremacy  seemed  to  bind  men  fast  to  pre- 


160  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

established  servitude.  Again,  the  conflicting  va- 
riety of  labor  legislation  enacted  by  forty-eight 
autonomous  states,  the  diversity  of  race-composi- 
tion and  also  of  economic  and  social  development 
over  a  continental  area,  the  individualistic  tradition 
of  a  people  awakened  to  the  wealth  of  a  still  ex- 
ploitable land,  these  have  confused  the  political  is- 
sue between  labor  and  capital;  while  the  conserva- 
tive mechanism  of  the  American  Constitution,  so 
generally  lauded  nevertheless  as  the  very  palla- 
dium of  liberty,  has  constituted  a  barrier  between 
labor  and  the  fruits  of  whatever  political  victory 
it  might  hope  to  achieve.  For  these  reasons  the 
protests  and  struggles  of  labor  have  been  more 
narrowly  economic,  and  only  a  socialist  minority 
has  insisted  on  the  correlation  of  political  and 
economic  power.  It  is  easy  to  explain  the  aloof- 
ness from  independent  politics  of  the  more  con- 
servative body  of  labor  in  America — whether  that 
aloofness  is  to-day  justified  is  much  more  dubious. 
Labor  in  other  lands  has  had  no  less  formidable, 
though  different,  obstacles  to  overcome  in  order  to 
achieve  any  real  political  weight,  and  the  associa- 
tion of  economic  and  political  power  is  ungainsay- 
able.  American  labor  has  not  developed  the 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD         161 

wider  statesmanship,  the  constructive  policy,  that 
political  experience  is  beginning  to  bestow  on  la- 
bor elsewhere.  There  is  little  sign  that  it  can 
seize,  with  decisive  insight  into  the  need  not  of  a 
class  but  of  a  people,  an  occasion  so  vast  as  that 
now  unrolling  before  the  industrial  world.  There 
is  little  sign  that  it  can,  for  example,  either  pro- 
duce or  adopt  a  program  of  the  strength  and 
quality  of  that  enunciated  in  the  manifestoes  of  the 
British  Labor  Party.1 

Another  vital  difference  springs  from  the  cir- 
cumstance that  Britain  is  subject  to  emigra- 
tion and  America  to  immigration.  Emigration 
simplifies  and  immigration  complicates  the  labor 
problem.  It  is  quite  obvious  that  in  any  country 
subject  to  large-scale  immigration  no  stable  or- 
ganization of  industry  can  be  maintained  apart 
from  a  supporting  policy  in  this  regard.  To  this 
difficult  subject  I  shall  later  return.  Here  I  need 

1  Since  the  above  was  written  there  has  begun,  once  again, 
the  formation  of  a  political  Labor  Party,  through  the  activity 
of  a  number  of  State  Labor  Federations,  commencing  with 
Illinois  and  New  York.  This  means  a  new  conflict  between 
the  wider  and  the  narrower  idea  of  labor,  between  those  who 
discern  the  relation  of  economic  and  political  power  and  the 
hard-shelled  doctrinaires  of  the  Gompers  regime.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  the  new  parties  claim  to  consider  "the  good  of 
all  who  work  by  hand  or  brain." 


162  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

merely  refer  to  the  way  in  which  immigration 
creates  cross-divisions  within  the  sphere  of  labor. 
In  every  country  the  distinction  between  skilled 
and  unskilled  labor  is  an  obstacle  to  solidarity, 
but  especially  so  in  America,  where  unskilled  labor 
is  largely  immigrant,  recruited  from  alien  peoples 
with  different  traditions  and  lower  standards  of 
living.  This  creates  a  more  determinate  division 
of  economic  class  and  economic  interest  than  is 
found  in  Europe,  and  it  makes  the  common  or- 
ganization of  labor  harder  to  realize.  In  Britain 
the  general  labor  unions  form  an  important,  if  not 
yet  integrated,  part  of  the  whole  trade  union  move- 
ment, while  in  America  unskilled  labor  remains 
a  chaotic  unorganized  mass,  save  for  the  fragments 
that  are  from  time  to  time  caught  up  by  revolu- 
tionary doctrines.  It  was  this  issue,  the  solidarity 
of  all  labor  versus  the  distinction  of  interest  be- 
tween skilled  and  unskilled,  which  was,  for  the 
time  being  at  least,  decided  in  the  historic  con- 
flict of  the  Knights  of  Labor  and  the  American 
Federation;  and  the  triumph  of  the  latter,  in  the 
late  eighties  of  last  century,  signally  revealed  the 
reality  and  the  extent  of  the  cleavage. 
Again,  we  suffer  more  violent  transitions  from 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD        163 

prosperity  to  adversity,  from  boom  to  depression, 
than  do  the  older  countries.  These  transitions 
profoundly  disturb  the  development  of  labor  poli- 
cies. In  the  boom  periods,  such  as  the  sixties  and 
the  early  eighties,  labor  organizations  have  gener- 
ally grown  strong  and  aggressive,  only  to  fall  back 
disorganizedly,  in  the  ensuing  depression,  into 
rarely  tenable  positions  of  defense.  Further- 
more, in  the  older  industrial  countries  the  relation 
between  agriculture  and  industry,  though  dis- 
turbed by  the  exceptional  stress  of  the  war,  ap- 
proaches nearer  a  state  of  equilibrium  than  with 
us.  For  these  reasons  we  experience  greater  fluc- 
tuations of  employment  and  unemployment  than  a 
country  like  Great  Britain,  while  we  have  fewer 
safeguards  in  the  form  of  provision  and  insurance 
against  this  and  other  industrial  risks.  Such  con- 
ditions undoubtedly  make  industrial  reconstruc- 
tion harder  to  achieve,  but  they  certainly  do  not 
lessen  the  likelihood  of  after-war  crisis. 

Along  with  these  differences  of  organization 
there  are  corresponding  differences  of  spirit  to  be 
reckoned.  Differences  in  organization  are  easily 
seen  and  described,  but  differences  of  spirit  are 
more  elusive  and  hard  to  isolate  in  the  confusing 


1 64  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

cross-currents  of  what  we  take  to  be  the  national 
life.  To  suggest  them  in  a  phrase  or  two  is  to  run 
grave  risk  of  simplifying,  exaggerating,  and  dis- 
torting them.  Yet  there  seems  to  be  a  quality  in 
American  civilization  which  has  an  immediate 
bearing  on  the  industrial  situation.  For  one  of 
its  main  effects  is  to  give  a  primacy,  a  simplicity, 
and  in  fact  a  narrowness  to  the  economic  interest 
less  universal  elsewhere.  Elsewhere  men  are  apt 
to  seek  economic  power  as  a  means  to  position, 
dignity,  political  and  social  dominance.  Here 
these  superiorities  are  more  often  regarded,  by  the 
men  who  acquire  them  at  least,  if  not  by  their  pri- 
vileged families,  as  a  means  to  economic  power; 
and  wealth  buys  its  gratifications  more  directly, 
more  ostentatiously,  and  also,  to  use  the  term  with 
no  necessary  implication  of  better  or  worse,  more 
materialistically.  Similarly,  where  the  struggle  is 
not  for  wealth  but  livelihood,  the  economic  arena 
more  completely  bounds  men's  aspirations.  The 
small  circles  which  call  out  men's  loyalties  less 
clearly  connect  with  the  great  circle  of  the  nation. 
Cohesiveness,  especially  among  immigrant  groups, 
may  be  even  more  intense  than  elsewhere,  but  it  is 
fragmentary.  There  is  more  opportunism,  more 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD    165 

economic  ruthlessness,  though  the  idealism  which 
does  emerge  is  also  less  fettered  by  tradition. 
Whence  arise  many  of  the  peculiarities  of  our 
social  and  political  structure,  many  of  its  defects 
— and  many  of  its  potentialities. 

The  conditions  of  our  growth  as  a  continent 
have  left  their  impress,  even  where  they  no  longer 
manifestly  operate.  These  conditions  bred  or  at- 
tracted the  more  individualistic  and  externally  ad- 
venturous types,  the  pioneer,  the  migrant,  the 
land-exploiter,  the  hunter  after  fortune.  Theirs 
was  indeed  the  necessary  spirit  of  an  army  of  oc- 
cupation, but  the  time  of  settlement  follows,  and 
then  that  spirit  proves  a  hindrance.  More  sta- 
bility is  demanded,  a  wider  purpose,  a  deeper 
sense  of  social  responsibility. 

This  has  been  lacking  in  our  industrial  relations, 
perhaps  more  obviously  than  in  other  lands.  I 
am  speaking  in  general,  well  aware  of  numerous 
exceptions,  but  the  general  statement  seems  true. 
It  applies  as  much  to  workers  as  employers,  but, 
by  reason  of  his  economic  advantage,  it  is  the  em- 
ployer who  must  first  exhibit  that  change  of  atti- 
tude without  which  harmonious  relations  will  be 
still  less  realized  in  the  future  than  in  the  past. 


i66  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

On  this  point  there  is  much  need  of  insistence.  If, 
in  the  changed  temper  of  labor  and  of  the  world, 
industrial  order,  not  to  say  human  progress,  is  to 
be  assured  after  the  war,  the  employer  must  every- 
where unlearn  the  doctrine  that  human  labor  is 
merely  a  commodity,  so  to  be  treated,  so  to  be 
bought,  so  to  be  used  up,  driven,  or  rejected,  as 
will  conduce  to  the  immediate  maximum  of  pro- 
ductivity or  of  profit.  The  very  opportunities 
afforded  by  a  young  land  have  contributed  to  foster 
that  attitude,  men  being  so  engrossed  in  its  ex- 
ploitation, in  the  control  of  its  material  resources, 
that  they  have  scarcely  been  able  to  stop  and  con- 
sider its  human  costs.  I  remember  talking  to  the 
manager  of  a  large  packing  plant,  who  told  me  en- 
thusiastically how  the  introduction  of  a  resident 
doctor,  along  with  some  simple  hygienic  precau- 
tions, had  worked  wonders  in  the  health  of  his  es- 
tablishment. "Formerly,"  he  said,  "we  had  forty 
cases  of  septic  poisoning  a  month,  now  we  have 
scarcely  three."  I  enquired  why,  if  the  provision 
was  so  simple,  inexpensive  and  effective,  it  had 
never  been  introduced  before.  "We  have  been  so 
busy  expanding,"  he  replied,  "that  we  had  no  time 
to  think  about  it  before."  A  young  country  fur- 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  OLD    167 

nishes  a  particular  temptation  to  think  more  in 
terms  of  size  than  of  welfare,  of  output  than  of 
human  utility.  To  grow  big  has  naturally,  perhaps 
inevitably,  seemed  more  urgent  than  to  lay  the 
sound  foundations  of  prosperity.  But  whatever 
justifications  may  have  been  offered  for  that  doc- 
trine in  the  past  they  are  ruled  out  by  the  neces- 
sities of  the  present. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  kind  of  irresponsibil- 
ity to  which  I  refer  is  found  in  the  attitude  of  the 
majority  of  workers  and  the  majority  of  employ- 
ers towards  unionism.  But  this  is  a  subject  of 
such  importance  as  to  deserve  a  separate  chapter. 


CHAPTER  X 

RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  TRADE  UNION 

Indifference  towards  unionism  of  the  majority 
of  wage-earners.  Opposition  on  the  part  of 
employers.  Attitude  of  the  general  public. 
The  union  as  a  sine  qua  non  of  industrial  order 
and  progress.  Objections  to  unionism  consid- 
ered. Probable  developments.  Equilibrium 
versus  harmony  in  industrial  relations,  and  the 
principles  underlying  both.  Reflections  on 
unorganized  labor. 

THERE  is  nothing  that  to  my  mind  more  clearly 
reveals  our  general  failure  to  appreciate  the  con- 
ditions of  industrial  progress  than  the  prevailing 
attitude  towards  trade-unionism.  I  have  already 
commented  on  the  lack  of  interest  on  the  side  of 
the  workers.  The  only  organization  that  stands 
definitely  for  the  wage-earner  is  the  union,  and  yet 
in  America  probably  less  than  fifteen  per  cent  of 
the  wage-earners  are  organized.  For  whatever 
causes,  indifference,  timidity,  lack  of  stability,  dif- 
ficulty of  rural  organization,  and  so  on,  the  large 

168 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    169 

majority  of  workers  still  remain  outside  the  unions. 
Even  of  those  inside  a  large  number  have  but  the 
feeblest  hold  on  the  union  principle,  as  the  great 
fluctuations  in  membership  from  time  to  time  re- 
veal; while  a  still  larger  number  are  indifferent 
to  any  but  the  immediate  interests  of  their  own 
which  unionism  may  serve.  Except  in  a  few 
specially  favorable  industries  the  union  itself  re- 
mains at  a  rudimentary  stage  of  development. 
The  great  problems  of  unionism,  such  as  the  rela- 
tive merits  of  craft,  trade,  and  industry  as  units 
of  organization ;  the  relation  of  unionism  to  politi- 
cal activity;  the  adjustment  of  the  interests  of 
skilled  and  unskilled  workers ;  the  coordination  of 
conflicting  jurisdictions — have  received  far  less 
attention  than  they  deserve.  And  union  policy  as 
a  whole  is  hand-to-mouth,  haphazard,  and  frag- 
mentary. 

On  the  other  side  a  great  number  of  employers 
exhibit,  not  mere  indifference,  but  open  or  secret 
hostility  to  unionism.  Too  often  they  regard  the 
union  as  a  mere  nuisance,  a  source  of  disturbance 
and  "agitation"  which  they  refuse  to  recognize  ex- 
cept under  force  majeure.  Every  conceivable  de- 
vice— black  lists,  white  lists,  employment  books, 


1 70  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

card  catalogues,  "iron-clad"  oaths,  espionage,  dis- 
criminatory bonus  and  "welfare"  schemes,  subor- 
nation, bribery,  and  all  the  rest — has  been  used  to 
frustrate  and  discourage  the  union.  Employers 
great  and  small,  from  the  directorate  of  the  U.  S. 
Steel  Corporation  to  the  boss  of  the  most  wretched 
New  York  sweating  den,  have  discriminated 
against  unionists.  In  a  country  that  calls  itself 
free  beyond  others  the  elementary  right  of  or- 
ganization has  been  denied  more  truculently  than 
perhaps  anywhere  else  in  the  world.  The  union, 
its  opponents  believe,  make  the  worker  less  sub- 
missive. Naturally  they  do  not  consider  whether 
there  are  not  in  industry  conditions  to  which  the 
workers  should  not  submit.  It  is  not  the  union, 
it  is  the  condition  under  which  so  many  workers 
toil  and  exist,  from  which  "unrest"  springs.  The 
union  voices  that  unrest,  it  does  not  create  it. 
Rather,  the  union  gives  it  an  orderly  expression, 
and  helps  to  suppress  its  more  violent  and  inef- 
fective forms.  The  union  cannot  even  be  said 
in  general  to  foster  strikes,  as  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  the  oldest  established  unions  are  gen- 
erally the  slowest  to  appeal  to  the  strike,  and  that 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    171 

a  large  percentage  of  strikes  take  place  contrary 
to  the  ruling  of  the  union  executives. 

Lastly,  the  "outside  public,"  that  large  body 
which  rightly  or  wrongly  regards  itself  as  belong- 
ing to  the  ranks  neither  of  capitalists  nor  of  wage- 
earners,  has  tended  to  look  with  little  favor  on  the 
union,  often  condemning  it  as  a  mischief-making 
association  interfering  with  the  ordinary  business 
of  the  community.  I  have  heard  professional 
men  denounce  the  union  principle,  never  reflecting 
that  their  own  professional  organizations,  those  of 
law  and  medicine,  for  example,  are  just  particu- 
larly successful  and  privileged  unions,  pursuing  in 
their  own  sphere  the  same  ends,  and  employing 
many  of  the  same  methods,  as  industrial  unions. 
Those  who  really  desire  to  see  order  take  the  place 
of  chaos  in  industrial  relations  should,  instead  of 
discouraging,  do  what  they  can  to  encourage  union- 
ism. 

The  truth  is  that  the  "outside  public,"  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  traditional  political  parties,  the 
small  landlords,  the  farmers,  the  professional 
men,  the  small  business  men,  retailers,  clerks,  have 
been  rather  blindly  individualistic.  Their  not  un- 
warranted fear  of  the  aggression  of  big  associa- 


172  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

tions  has  led  them  to  the  quite  unwarranted  infer- 
ence that  the  national  interest  is  best  secured  where 
industrial  and  commercial  associations  remain 
small.  They  were  always  trying  to  push  compe- 
tition a  little  further  from  themselves  and  piously 
hoping  that  it  would  nevertheless  continue,  for 
their  benefit,  its  unabated  sway  over  others,  par- 
ticularly over  the  bigger  amalgamations  which  in 
fact  are  most  able  to  control  it.  They  did  not 
see  that  free  competition  is  free  disorganization, 
that  the  predatory  chaos  of  small  business  is  ut- 
terly wasteful  and  subjects  employers  and  workers 
alike  to  endless  demoralizing  hazards,  whereas  the 
unification  of  large  business,  given  intelligent 
political  control,  prepares  the  way  for  an  era  of 
security  and  constructiveness.  There  will  be  no 
industrial  order  worth  having  until  industry  is  or- 
ganized as  a  whole,  which  means  also  until  labor 
is  organized  as  a  whole.  Now  the  pendulum  is 
swinging  back  from  the  extreme  of  individualism, 
and  as  it  moves,  the  attitude  of  the  public  towards 
unionism  grows  more  sympathetic. 

For  we  must  come  to  see  that  in  the  modern  in- 
dustrial world  the  union  is  a  necessary  means  to 
the  securing  of  order  and  progress.  This  is  being 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    173 

realized  in  the  older  lands,  where  every  plan  for 
the  improvement  of  industrial  relations,  such  as 
the  Whitley  program,  depends  on  the  active  par- 
ticipation of  the  unions.  Just  as  employers'  asso- 
ciations stand  for  the  point  of  view  of  capital,  so 
trade  unions  must  stand  for  the  point  of  view  of 
labor.  The  union  should  stand  for  all  those  who 
work,  as  they  say  in  mining,  "at  the  face,"  who 
know  its  toil  and  expense  of  spirit,  who  alone  can 
appreciate  its  human  costs,  who  are  partners  in  all 
production,  and  may  claim  as  partners  to  have  a 
voice  in  the  determination  of  its  conditions  and  in 
the  apportionment  of  its  products.  To  refuse 
recognition  to  the  union,  or  more  generally,  to  re- 
gard a  business  as  existing  merely  for  the  sake 
of  its  "owner"  in  the  sense  of  those  who  contribute 
its  capital,  is  to  treat  partners  in  production  as  in- 
struments only  of  production,  it  is  to  treat  persons 
as  only  mechanisms. 

It  is  often  objected  that  the  unions  impede  in- 
dustrial progress  by  prescribing  limitation  of  out- 
put, by  opposing  the  introduction  of  labor-saving 
devices,  by  insisting  on  uniformity  of  wage-rates, 
and  so  on.  There  is  truth  in  the  indictment, 
though  it  is  a  common  and  serious  mistake  to  sup- 


174  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

pose  that  all  the  opposition  to  improved  means  of 
production  comes  from  the  workers:  capital  also 
is  conservative  and  has  vested  interests  which 
sometimes  block  technical  advance.  Besides,  the 
truth  of  the  indictment  is  subordinate  to  the  deeper 
truth  that  this  opposition  is  a  part  of  the  penalty 
we  pay  under  a  system  which  sharply  divorces  the 
interest  of  labor  from  that  of  capital.  Again 
it  is  not  unionism  but  the  system  which  must  finally 
be  held  responsible.  The  remedy  can  be  found 
only  in  an  industrial  order  wherein  men  can  work 
safe  from  the  haunting  tragic  fear — none  the  less 
potent  because  it  is  sometimes  illusory — that  their 
very  efficiency  may  be  their  undoing,  that  their 
speed  will  bring  unemployment  or  their  skill  be  the 
means  of  lowering  their  own  or  their  fellow  work- 
ers' wages. 

How  can  that  be  achieved  apart  from  the  trade 
union?  Without  security  in  their  work  how  can 
the  wage-earners  have  effective  interest  in  their 
work,  and  how  can  they  have  security  without  or- 
ganization ?  Without  the  union  how  can  the  more 
cut-throat  forms  of  competition,  so  fatal  to  the 
workers'  standard  of  life,  ever  be  abolished? 
How  can  that  standing  menace  of  civilization,  un- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    175 

employment,  ever  be  mastered?  Without  the 
union  how  can  understandings  be  reached  which 
will  permit  of  the  full  application  of  beneficent 
science  within  industry?  Without  the  union  how 
can  the  sense  of  impotence  be  overcome  which 
leads  to  violence,  disintegration,  and  revolution- 
aryism?  Without  the  union  how  can  the  most  ele- 
mentary safe-guards  of  free  men,  in  face  of  the 
vast  power  of  organized  capital  described  in  the 
preceding  chapter,  be  attained?  It  is  the  union 
which  has  made  possible  the  remarkable  spells  of 
fruitful  peace  which  have  been  witnessed  in,  for 
example,  the  cotton  industry  of  Lancashire  and 
the  bituminous  coal  industry  of  America.  It  is 
the  trade  union  bargaining  freely  and  strongly 
with  the  employers'  organization  which  has  opened 
up  the  new  way  of  trade  agreements,  giving  the 
administration  of  a  constitution  to  such  industries 
as  transportation,  mining  in  many  of  its  branches, 
the  building  trades,  the  pottery  trade,  the  printing 
trades,  and  the  metal  trades.  It  is  the  union, 
through  its  national  organization,  which  has  made 
possible  during  the  crisis  of  war,  the  establishment 
of  machinery  to  prevent  industrial  disputes,  the 
redistribution  of  labor  according  to  war  needs, 


176  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

and  the  acceleration  and  increase  of  output.  And 
finally,  beyond  these  beginnings  and  temporary 
expedients,  it  is  only  by  aid  of  the  union  that  the 
new  order  of  industry  can  be  achieved. 

What  precise  form  this  evolution  will  take  can 
scarcely  be  foreseen.  Any  real  harmony  seems 
still  far  off,  must  indeed  be  far  off  while  the  in- 
terests of  labor  and  capital  remain  so  disparate. 
Labor  will  have  to  cease  to  be  mere  servant  and 
capital  mere  owner  before  such  harmony  is  realiz- 
able. The  cleavage  of  function  which  the  indus- 
trial age  introduced  must  be  redintegrated  into 
some  form  of  community  of  function,  so  that  the 
terms  "capital"  and  "labor"  lose  their  present 
day  distinctiveness  as  applied  to  groups  of  men. 
If  that  cooperative  ideal  is  a  vain  dream,  so  also 
is  harmony.  But  in  any  case  it  lies  in  the  remoter 
future,  towards  which  nevertheless  it  is  necessary 
to  work.  In  the  meantime,  not  harmony  but  only 
equilibrium  is  possible,  through  the  realization, 
by  these  opposing  and  not  unequally  matched 
forces,  of  their  indispensibility  to  one  another. 
This  realization  will  naturally  create  not  so  much 
a  common  organization  of  employers  and  em- 
ployed as  a  common  meeting  ground  of  their  re- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    177 

spective  organizations.  The  direction  of  immedi- 
ate progress  is,  in  America  at  least,  not  common 
or  joint  councils  in  the  strict  sense,  but  a  system 
giving  the  representatives  of  organized  labor 
regular  access  to  the  representatives  of  organized 
capital.  With  the  existing  cleavage  of  interest 
a  common  council  would  tend  to  be  common  merely 
in  name,  the  meeting  together  of  two  utterly  dis- 
tinct groups.  The  immediate  establishment  of 
common  industrial  councils  might  also  endanger, 
in  all  except  the  best  organized  industries,  the  de- 
velopment of  unionism,  which  is  the  intermediate 
step  towards  the  new  order. 

But  equilibrium  is  a  thousand  times  better  than 
chaos.  That  it  is  practicable  (though  never  se- 
cure) many  modern  instances,  such  as  that  of  the 
bituminous  coal  industry  above  referred  to,  reveal. 
But  it  is  practicable  only  if  certain  principles,  still 
far  from  general  acceptance,  are  conceded  by  both 
sides.  These  principles  involve  the  agreement: 

( i )  On  the  part  of  the  employers,  not  to  dismiss 
or  prejudice  employes  for  union  member- 
ship or  activity;  to  confer,  on  all  matters  di- 
rectly affecting  them,  with  the  representatives 


178  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

of  organized  labor  or  generally  of  the  em- 
ployes concerned;  to  permit  the  reference  of 
grievances,  appeals  against  "unfair"  dis- 
missal, &c.,  to  the  joint  meeting  of  represen- 
tatives or  a  special  grievance  committee 
similarly  constituted. 

(2)  On  the  part  of  the  workers,  to  discounte- 
anace  deliberate  limitation  of  output  and 
other  hindrances  to  productivity,  no  longer 
necessary  to  protect  their  working  conditions, 
and  to  insist  on  the  fulfillment  by  all  workers 
of  contracts  and  trade  agreements  entered 
into  with  the  employers. 

What  results  can  be  attained  by  mutual  accept- 
ance of  these  principles  the  war-time  experience 
of  many  belligerent  states  has  revealed.  The  war 
made  intensive  and  uninterrupted  production  im- 
perative. Means  had  to  be  devised  which  would 
ensure  that  the  incessant  conflict  of  labor  and  capi- 
tal should  not  for  the  time  being  issue  in  strikes 
and  lockouts,  particularly  in  plants  working  on 
government  orders.  The  most  effective  means 
was  found  to  be  a  direct  contract  between  the  gov- 
ernment as  ultimate  employer  and  the  labor  or- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    179 

ganizations,  giving  the  latter  both  recognition  and 
the  status  of  a  partner,  through  representation  in 
the  determination  of  policy.  This  was  the  plan 
followed  by  the  Navy  Department,  the  Emerg- 
ency Fleet  Corporation  and  its  Shipbuilding  Labor 
Adjustment  Board,  the  fuel  administration,  the 
railroad  administration  and  one  division  of  the 
War  Department.  It  was  finally  embodied  in  the 
constitution  of  the  National  War  Labor  Board. 
All  this  was  an  entirely  new  policy,  so  far  as  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  is  concerned. 
But  it  made  possible  the  notable  achievement  of 
nearly  uninterrupted  industrial  activity  on  an  enor- 
mous scale,  in  the  cantonment  construction  camps, 
in  the  docks,  shipyards,  navy  yards,  and  arsenals, 
in  the  coal  mines  and  on  the  railroads.  That  this 
new  policy,  and  not  alone  the  favorable  concomi- 
tants of  patriotic  enthusiasm  and  relatively  high 
wages,  was  responsible  for  productive  efficiency  is 
suggested  by  the  contrasting  conditions  in  branches 
of  industry,  such  as  the  lumber  camps  and  copper 
mines,  where  no  such  methods  prevailed.  It  is 
of  course  neither  possible  nor  desirable  to  apply 
under  peace  conditions  the  compulsions  exercised 
during  the  war,  but  the  lesson  of  the  dependence  of 


i8o  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

efficiency  on  the  active  cooperation  of  both  sides 
should  not  be  lost. 

It  may  be  in  place  to  suggest  here  certain  fur- 
ther principles,  which  must  be  accepted  before 
common  councils,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term 
"common,"  could  be  established  with  success. 
They  are  as  briefly  as  possible  these  two : 

'( i )  That  each  workshop,  occupation  or  industry 
is  a  cooperative  unity,  in  which  all  the  mem- 
bers, management  and  workers  too,  have  a 
vital  interest,  and  where  a  vital  interest, 
should  have  also  a  voice  in  decisions  that 
affect  it — not  subordinated  to  the  claims  of 
any  outside  and  merely  passive  ownership; 

(2)  That  each  workshop,  occupation  or  indus- 
try is  but  a  specialized  division  of  the  com- 
munity, cooperating  with  all  others  in  sup- 
plying a  nation's  needs;  that  it  is  therefore 
fulfilling  a  national  service — and  a  service 
that  indeed  goes  often  beyond  the  nation — 
united  with  all  other  services  in  national 
obligation  under  the  sanction  of  the  State. 

The  distance  we  are  from  the  acceptance  of 
such  principles  is  the  distance  between  us  and  real 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  THE  UNION    181 

industrial  harmony.  Its  greatness  is  the  justifica- 
tion for  the  opinion  that  meantime  we  must 
look  on  equilibrium  as  the  direct  aim  to  be 
achieved,  not  a  static  equilibrium,  which  is  im- 
possible in  human  affairs,  but  a  "moving  equi- 
librium" leading  by  orderly  process  to  a  goal  con- 
jectured but  unknown. 

I  have  insisted  on  the  necessity  of  organiza- 
tion as  the  first  condition  of  order  and  progress. 
How  needful  it  is  a  contrasting  glance  at  the  con- 
dition of  unorganized  labor  reveals.  It  is,  taken 
as  a  whole,  the  most  depressed  part  of  labor,  the 
most  exploited,  the  most  inefficient,  the  most  un- 
skilled, the  most  prone  to  the  extremes  of  brutal 
indifference  and  spasmodic  violence.  It  is  the 
least  socialized,  the  least  able  to  achieve  its  own 
salvation.  For  the  more  unorganized  types  of 
labor  the  direct  intervention  of  the  State,  by  way 
of  Trade  Boards  charged  with  the  task  of  assur- 
ing minimum  rates  and  decent  conditions  of  work, 
is  the  only  immediate  hope.  And  this  is  a  make- 
shift, an  acknowledgment  of  the  helplessness  of 
that  class  to  secure  its  own  deliverance,  merely 
a  means  of  making  its  work  tolerable  and  no 


1 82  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

longer  a  peril  to  the  standards  of  the  rest  of  the 
community. 

In  a  word,  it  is  not  organized  labor  that  is  the 
peril — the  real  peril  to  the  nation  is  unorganized 
labor,  and  the  spirit  that  would  keep  labor  un- 
organized. The  organization  of  labor  is  a  basis 
necessary  for  any  permanent  reconstruction  in  in- 
dustry, for  any  creation  of  order  out  of  our  grow- 
ing chaos. 


CHAPTER  XI 

LABOR,  IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE 

Why  a  surplus  of  labor?  Is  unemployment  in- 
evitable? Organized  redirection  of  the  de- 
mand for  labor  the  way  to  remove  unemploy- 
ment. The  answer  to  the  Malthusian  chal- 
lenge. The  need  for  immigrational  control. 
The  literary  tests.  A  suggestion  for  a  more 
flexible  mode  of  control. 

"AT  nature's  mighty  feast  there  is  no  vacant 
cover"  for  every  new  comer  in  a  world  already 
possessed.  This  was  the  substance  of  a  famous 
parable  written  by  Malthus  at  the  end  of  the  i8th 
century.  Most  significant  changes  have  taken 
place  since  then.  Forces  which  he  saw  but  did 
not  appreciate  have  assumed  a  new  importance. 
The  principle  of  population  which  he  formulated 
and  feared  has  been  profoundly  modified  by  the 
psychological  reactions  of  an  age  that  no  longer 
fears  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.  Some 
thinkers  have  in  fact  already  passed  to  the  con- 
trary pessimism,  forecasting  a  world  of  dwindling 

183 


184  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

population  and  "race-suicide."  Whether  that 
pessimism  is  not  equally  vain  is  a  question  I  have 
elsewhere  discussed.1  What  I  wish  to  insist  on  is 
that,  in  spite  of  all  this  change,  one  corner-stone 
of  the  argument  of  Malthus  remains  as  solid  as 
ever.  It  is  the  permanent  "surplus"  of  labor,  the 
over-supply  of  workers  relative  to  the  demand  for 
their  services.  This  constitutes  the  crucial  ques- 
tion of  the  modern  industrial  order. 

Why  should  there  be  chronic  unemployment? 
Why  should  the  supply  of  labor  in  every  indus- 
trial country  normally  exceed  the  demand?  Why 
is  there  not  "enough  work  to  go  round"?  Why 
should  the  fear  of  over-production  characterize  a 
civilization  beset  by  poverty?  It  is  not  that,  abso- 
lutely, too  much  of  any  good  is  produced  to  satisfy 
the  desire  for  it.  The  wants  of  the  whole  popula- 
tion for  any  good  have  never  been  satisfied.  It  is 
not  that,  absolutely,  the  population  is  already  too 
great  for  the  land  and  its  resources.  There  is  more 
unemployment,  as  a  rule,  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada,  with  their  unfilled  fertile  lands,  than  in 
the  United  Kingdom.  It  is  not  that,  absolutely, 
the  capital  is  lacking  which  can  set  labor  profit- 
*In  my  book  Community,  Bk.  Ill,  c.  VI,  §i,  and  c.  VII,  $5. 


IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE    185 

ably  to  work.  In  the  words  of  Mr.  Beveridge, 
"unemployment  is  a  question  not  of  the  scale  of 
industry  but  of  its  organization."  While  capital, 
relatively  to  population,  has  greatly  increased  in 
industrial  lands,  unemployment  has  not  propor- 
tionately decreased.  On  this  point  the  great  war 
has  also  a  plain  lesson  to  teach  us.  Its  insatiate 
demand  for  capital  has  tapped  no  less  adequate 
sources  of  supply,  because  there  existed  the  will 
and  the  organization  to  provide  it.  The  capital 
necessary  so  to  organize  industry  as  to  set  all  the 
genuine  unemployed  to  work — to  work  fruitful 
in  the  production  of  further  wealth,  not,  like  war- 
fare, destructive  of  the  wealth  that  already  exists 
— is  but  a  trifle  in  comparison.  If  the  will  and 
the  organization  were  forthcoming,  the  problem 
of  unemployment  would  be  solved  forever. 

What  is  the  nature  of  this  requisite  organiza- 
tion? The  root  of  unemployment — and  of  a  hun- 
dred economic  maladjustments — is  the  unregu- 
lated relation  of  demand  to  supply.  In  respect 
of  labor,  demand  controls,  not  supply,  but  the 
utilization  and  direction  of  the  supply.  "De- 
mand," as  a  great  English  writer  in  another  field 
of  thought  has  said,  "is  very  imperious,  and  supply 


186  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

must  be  very  suppliant."  Demand  is  a  function 
of  the  existing  distribution  of  wealth,  and  directs 
the  supply  so  as  to  maintain  that  distribution  or 
even  to  enhance  its  inequality.  The  poorer  you 
are,  the  less  your  demand  (however  great  your 
need)  ;  the  less  therefore  the  provision  for  satis- 
fying your  demand.  The  richer  you  are,  the 
greater  your  demand  (however  socially  insig- 
nificant your  yet  unsatisfied  need)  and  therefore 
the  greater  the  diversion  of  labor  to  satisfy  your 
demand.  From  which  it  follows  that  superfluity 
and  poverty  (and  therefore  unemployment)  have 
a  common  root.  Every  increase  of  capital — and 
in  normal  times  there  is  an  almost  automatic  in- 
crease of  capital  from  year  to  year — makes  greater 
prosperity  possible,  but  the  general  industrial  dis- 
organization, of  which  the  competitive  inferiority 
of  the  labor  supply  has  hitherto  been  an  essential 
quality,  so  defeats  its  beneficent  working  that  the 
great  mass  of  poverty  seems  little  if  at  all  dimin- 
ished. 

If  the  preceding  analysis,  which  is  the  merest 
summary  of  the  conclusions  of  the  most  compe- 
tent investigations  into  the  whole  problem,  is 
true,  it  follows  that  a  certain  organized  redirec- 


IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE    187 

tion  of  the  demand  for  labor  is  the  radical  cure 
for  genuine  unemployment.  Valuable  aids  are 
found  in  the  systematization  of  labor,  through  pub- 
lic employment  exchanges,  through  industrial  and 
general  training  and  guidance,  through  whatever 
regularization  of  seasonal  trades  is  feasible, 
through  the  methods  which  reduce  labor  turn- 
over, through  the  decasualization  of  casual  labor, 
and  through  the  control  of  hours  and  conditions 
of  works.  But  these,  important  and  necessary  as 
they  are,  rather  prepare  the  way  for  than  provide 
the  solution.  The  demand  must  adapt  itself  more 
adequately  to  the  supply  than  it  is  now  doing  if 
ever  the  central  evil  of  modern  industry  is  to  be 
overcome.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  supply  must 
help  to  direct  the  demand  no  less  than  vice  versa. 
The  first  great  step  on  this  road  will  come  through 
the  deliberate  control  of  public  work,  its  distribu- 
tion, acceleration  and  retardation,  according  to 
the  changing  conditions  of  the  "labor  market." 
Now  that  governments,  municipalities  and  other 
public  authorities  are  becoming  ever  greater  em- 
ployers of  labor,  their  power  over  the  distribu- 
tion of  labor  is  growing  enormous.  This  gives 
them  a  direct  means  of  controlling  the  whole  labor 


i88  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

market  and  thereby  minimizing  unemployment. 
The  necessities  of  the  transition  period  will  prob- 
ably compel  them  to  apply  this  means  as  never 
before,  and  one  may  hope  that  the  new  insight 
into  industrial  conditions  which  they  have  been 
forced  to  acquire  during  the  war  will  enable  them 
to  apply  it  with  resolution  and  intelligence.  So  a 
great  beneficent  experiment  may  be  set  up  which 
others  than  public  authorities  will  follow. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  unemployment  insurance 
as  a  remedy.  It  should  be  a  last  resort,  and  the 
more  intelligence  is  applied  in  the  directions  al- 
ready indicated  the  less  will  it  be  necessary.  It 
should  certainly  be  adopted  in  so  far  as  other 
measures  fail  to  abolish  genuine  unemployment. 
(Here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  necessary  very  clearly 
to  distinguish  genuine  unemployment  from  the 
"out-of-workness"  of  the  unhappily  large  mass  of 
the  industrially  disqualified,  who  require  treatment 
of  a  different  order  altogether.)  But  unemploy- 
ment insurance  is  a  confession  of  failure.  The 
funds  devoted  to  this  palliative  would  in  a  wiser 
society  be  devoted  to  setting  the  recipients  of  in- 
surance to  fruitful  work. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  a  certain  assumption 


IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE    189 

has  underlain  the  argument  of  these  last  para- 
graphs. Until  quite  recently  all  plans  to  abolish 
unemployment  awakened  the  Malthusian  chal- 
lenge. Your  schemes  are  well  enough,  the  objec- 
tor would  say,  if  it  were  not  for  the  factor  of 
population.  Control  that  if  you  can  and  dare, 
but,  until  you  do,  don't  think  to  control  unemploy- 
ment. You  may  absorb  the  existing  surplus  of 
labor  by  industrial  readjustment,  but  the  very  se- 
curity you  thus  ensure  will  breed  future  surpluses 
to  break  your  newly  established  order.  Your 
Eden,  he  would  say  in  the  famous  words  of  Hux- 
ley, "would  have  its  serpent,  and  a  very  subtle 
beast,  too.  Man  shares  with  the  rest  of  the  liv- 
ing world  the  mighty  instinct  of  reproduction  and 
its  consequences,  the  tendency  to  multiply  with 
great  rapidity.  The  better  the  measure  of  the  ad- 
ministrator achieved  their  object,  the  more  com- 
pletely the  destructive  agencies  of  the  state  of 
nature  were  defeated,  the  less  would  that  multi- 
plication be  checked."  Here  in  fact,  he  would 
tell  us,  is  the  real  explanation  of  the  peramnent 
surplus  of  labor  above  the  demand. 

And  until  quite  recently  he  would  have  been 
well  justified  in  his  objections.     But  the  answer 


LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

has  grown  so  convincing,  is  so  luminous  in  the  sta- 
tistics of  the  declining  birth-rates  of  all  advancing 
civilizations,  that  our  Malthusian  has  retreated 
from  his  main  position,  and  now  talks  only  of  par- 
ticular menaces  such  as  spring  from  the  relative 
"fertility"  of  the  poor  as  contrasted  with  the  well- 
to-do,  and  of  the  simpler  as  contrasted  with  the 
more  cultured  races,  not  of  the  general  menaces  of 
"over-population."  Even  on  these  remoter 
grounds  he  is  no  longer  safe  from  attack,  and  may 
be  assailed  by  other  statistics  which  show  the  cor- 
relation of  high  birth-rate  and  high  death-rate,  as 
well  as  by  considerations  of  the  advance  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  percolation  of  habit  from  "upper" 
to  "lower"  social  strata,  and  from  advanced  to 
backward  people. 

The  assumption  then  which  has  underlain  the 
argument  is  that  in  the  more  advanced  countries 
the  development  of  industrial  technique  and  the 
exploitation  of  the  resources  of  the  earth  is  in 
our  age,  and  clearly  promises  to  be  in  future,  at 
least  sufficient  to  keep  pace  with  the  growth  of 
population.  This  fact  is  of  the  very  first  impor- 
tance. If  it  were  not  a  fact,  all  our  plans  to 
create  a  new  industrial  order — a  better  order  of 


any  kind — would  be  vain,  for  every  attempt  to 
check  the  more  pernicious  competition  which  low- 
ers the  standard  of  life  would  be  defeated  by  the 
operation  of  a  baffling  and  inexorable  law.  The 
"principle  of  diminishing  returns"  would  frustrate 
all  efforts  for  human  betterment  and  mock  all 
visions  of  future  progress.  Those  who  look  with 
fear  on  a  falling  birth-rate  should  bethink  them- 
selves also  of  these  things.  They  should  consider 
whether  this  decline,  apart  from  the  incident  per- 
versions which  accompany  every  human  process, 
is  not  the  index  of  a  new  equilibrium  of  human 
life,  which  is  being  established  as  a  result  of  its 
advance  and  is  the  very  condition  of  any  further? 
advance.  They  should  ask  in  the  light  of  what- 
ever philosophy  of  life  they  are  able  to  attain, 
whether  the  quality  of  humanity  is  not  a  supremer 
consideration  than  its  quantity.  These  questions 
would  indeed  be  easier  to  ask  and  to  answer  if 
once  the  spirit  of  militarism  were  exorcised  out  of 
our  civilization.  For  it  is  one  of  the  more  abom- 
inable characteristics  of  militarism  that  it  holds 
most  in  regard  those  quantitative  properties  of 
men  which  can  be  massed  as  mere  external  power, 
contemning  all  real  values.  While  it  rules  in  any 


192  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

nation,  it  compels  all  others  that  would  worship 
truer  gods  to  sacrifice  some  of  these  values  at  its 
shrine. 

There  remains  for  consideration  one  source  of 
over-supply  which  Malthus  had  no  need  to  con- 
sider in  that  regard,  but  which  has  caused  much 
doubt  and  questioning  among  ourselves.  I  refer 
of  course  to  immigration.  It  is  a  subject  beset 
by  unusual  difficulties.  Here  prejudice  and  inter- 
est combine  and  cross  most  subtly  and  curiously  to 
warp  our  judgments,  and  the  most  opposite  con- 
siderations unite  the  advocates  of  restriction  and 
of  the  open  door.  If  we  confine  ourselves,  how- 
ever, to  the  direct  question  of  the  effect  of  immi- 
gration on  labor,  the  main  factors  of  the  situation 
seem  fairly  clear. 

I  believe  that  a  carefully  restrictive  control  of 
immigration  is  absolutely  necessary  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  kind  of  industrial  order  already 
suggested.  Not  because  there  is  no  room  or  fruit- 
ful work  in  America  for  all  the  myriads  who 
annually  (in  normal  times)  pass  through  its  gates. 
The  vast  resources  of  this  continent  could  sustain, 
given  scientific  cultivation  of  the  land,  and  an 
economic  distribution  of  the  people,  we  know  not 


IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE    193 

how  many  times  its  present  population.  And  not 
because  the  newcomers,  from  Europe  at  any  rate, 
cannot  be  assimilated  into  American  life  and 
raised — where  raising  is  in  question — to  Ameri- 
can standards.  The  response  to  the  American 
environment  of  the  children  of  the  foreign  born, 
even  of  those  whom  we  remissly  suffer  to  be  in- 
sulated in  racial  colonies,  is  a  most  remarkable 
phenomenon.  But  the  true  reason  for  restrictive 
control  is  an  economic  one.  The  Report  of  the 
Immigration  Commission  provides  much  evidence 
to  show  that  the  low-skilled  occupations  into  which 
the  mass  of  immigrants  enter  are  considerably 
overstocked.  Too  cheap  labor  is,  like  all  cheap 
things,  very  expensive  in  the  long  run.  Our  so- 
ciety as  a  whole,  as  well  as  those  directly  con- 
cerned, suffers  on  account  of  the  low  standards, 
the  overcrowding  and  the  infection,  the  disor- 
ganization and  the  exploitation,  which  are  the 
other  side  of  too  cheap  labor.  These  evils  can- 
not be  avoided  so  long  as  unskilled  myriads  are 
allowed  to  flood  the  labor  market.  No  stand- 
ards can  be  maintained,  no  order  can  be  built  up 
in  face  of  the  competition  of  the  immigrant-re- 


194  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

cruited  reserves  of  unemployed.  This  indisput- 
able fact  is  the  true  ground  for  restriction. 

The  literacy  test  recommended  by  the  Immigra- 
tion Commission  and  enacted  by  Congress  should 
prove  a  valuable  safeguard.  It  affords  the 
simplest,  most  practicable,  and  least  invidious 
form  of  selection.  Whether  it  is  sufficient  re- 
mains of  course  to  be  seen.  But  a  more  flexible 
method  of  control,  working  along  the  same  lines, 
would  have  obvious  advantages  if  feasible.  The 
following  plan  is  here  suggested  with  this  end  in 
view: 

The  whole  question  of  employment  and  unem- 
ployment is  so  central  as  to  call  for  the  undivided 
consideration  of  a  body  (or  a  branch  of  the  De- 
partment of  Labor)  specially  allocated  to  this  task. 
Such  a  body  might  be  constituted  as  a  Federal  ad- 
visory council  in  connection  with  a  national  bureau 
of  public  employment  offices.  It  would  formulate 
common  standards  for  these  offices  and  advise  on 
common  policy.  Maintaining  close  touch  with 
the  whole  demand-and-supply  situation  of  labor, 
it  would  be  in  an  excellent  position  to  suggest  from 
time  to  time  a  public  works  policy  in  harmony  with 
that  situation.  It  would  advise  accordingly  as 


IMMIGRATION  AND  THE  BIRTH  RATE    195 

to  the  distribution,  the  acceleration  or  the  retarda- 
tion of  works  undertaken  or  projected  by  the  Fed- 
eral Government  and  also  by  such  other  public 
authorities,  state  or  local,  as  could  be  induced  to 
cooperate  with  it. 

Would  not  such  a  body  be  better  qualified  than 
any  other  to  say,  purely  in  terms  of  the  employ- 
ment situation,  when  and  how  far  it  was  desirable 
to  relax  or  tighten  the  immigration  tests?  The 
council  would  of  course  be  able  only  to  advise,  and 
considerations  other  than  the  condition  of  the 
labor  market  might  have  to  be  weighed  before 
action  were  taken  in  any  particular  case.  But 
the  paramount  consideration  is  the  condition  of 
employment,  as  viewed  by  those  who  understand 
the  prospective  as  well  as  the  existing  condition  of 
demand  and  supply.  The  raising  or  lowering  of 
the  admission  tests  would  not  be  a  difficult  matter. 
Literacy  is  a  question  of  degree,  and  simple 
gradations  could  readily  be  determined,  with  the 
rudimentary  ability  to  read  and  write  as  the  low- 
est grade.  These  tests  and  standards,  together 
with  the  ordinary  regulations  affecting  immigra- 
tion, could  be  administered  under  direction  of  the 
consular  service  in  Europe  and  elsewhere,  and  thus 


196  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  hardships,  delays  and  disappointments  of  re- 
jection and  deportation  on  this  side  would  be 
avoided.  A  consular  certificate  would  be  the  neces- 
sary and  sufficient  permit  of  the  intending  immi- 
grant. 

There  are  of  course  real  difficulties  involved 
in  this  plan,  but  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  we  are 
dealing  with  an  extremely  difficult  problem.  The 
present  time  offers  a  most  favorable  opportunity 
for  judicious  experimentation  while  the  check 
which  the  war  and  its  aftermath  have  given  to 
immigration  lasts.  Finally,  any  general  policy  of 
immigration  should,  if  possible,  be  one  concerted 
between  the  United  States  and  Canada,  on  account 
of  their  common  interest  in  the  matter  and  of  the 
frontier  difficulties  and  evasions  arising  from  a 
discrepancy  of  standards. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN 

The  position  of  women  in  industry.  The  squat 
pyramid.  The  influence  of  the  war  on  the 
sphere  of  women's  work.  The  unequal  com- 
petition of  men  and  women.  The  dilemma  of 
"equal  pay  for  equal  work"  Is  there  a  way 
out? 

THE  famous  declaration  that  a  country  cannot 
endure  half  servile  and  half  free  may  be  directed 
with  peculiar  force  to  the  present  relationship  of 
men  and  women  in  industry.  Unless  the  woman 
worker  too  is  emancipated,  the  emancipation  of 
the  man  worker  must  always  be  hazardous  and  in- 
complete. This  is  not  the  ultimate  reason  why 
society  should  be  concerned  over  the  industrial 
status  of  women,  but  it  is  that  which  is  most  likely 
to  appeal  to  those  men  workers  whose  too  narrow 
but  quite  natural  fears  have  led  them  to  oppose, 
in  the  case  of  women,  the  claims  on  which  they 

have  been  most  insistent  for  themselves. 

197 


198  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

The  lot  of  women  in  industry  is,  without  quali- 
fication, the  most  damning  indictment  of  our  pres- 
ent system.  Consider  for  a  moment  the  general 
character  it  presents.  As  an  economic  structure, 
the  work  of  women  in  industry,  before  the  period 
of  the  war,  might  be  likened  to  a  broad-based  and 
very  squat  pyramid.  The  lowest  tier  would  in- 
clude the  multitudes  of  women  in  the  "sweated  in- 
dustries," seamstresses,  tailoresses,  dressmakers, 
lacemakers,  flo.wermakers,  boxmakers,  and  all 
others  engaged  in  that  dismal  survival  of  the  old 
in  the  new,  the  home  finishing  of  factory  goods; 
with  these  must  also  be  grouped  many  of  the 
workers  in  uncontrolled  semi-domestic  factories, 
as  for  example  in  small  canneries,  bakeshops,  and 
laundries — all  these  subject,  between  the  intervals 
of  unemployment,  to  excessive  hours  of  labor  and 
to  conditions  that  undermine  the  health  of  body 
and  spirit.  And  by  this  labor,  patient  and  persistent 
beyond  the  labor  of  the  scripturally  commended 
ant,  they  earn  so  poor  a  pittance  that  great  num- 
bers of  them  are  permanently  underfed,  perma- 
nently deprived  of  the  comforts  and  decencies 
of  life.  Arising  out  of  that  level,  by  fine  grada- 
tions, come  the  ranks  of  women  who  feed  and 


THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN  199 

tend  machines,  drudge  labor  badly  paid;  and 
with  these  the  majority  of  salesgirls  in  stores. 
From  that  level  there  emerge  the  office-workers, 
stenographers  and  secretaries;  and  above  these,  in 
rapidly  diminishing  numbers  towards  the  apex  of 
the  pyramid,  the  women  managers  and  entrepre- 
neurs, the  "business  women"  of  modern  days. 

The  youth  of  the  nation's  womanhood,  in  ever- 
increasing  multitudes,  is  thrust  by  economic  forces 
into  the  lowest  tiers  of  this  squat  pyramid,  with  in 
general  no  industrial  training,  no  guidance,  no 
fit  preparation  in  general  education,  no  prospect 
but  that  of  escape  by  marriage.  Before  the  war 
nearly  half  the  women  workers  of  America  were 
under  25  years  of  age,  and  of  those  over  15  years 
of  age  80  per  cent  (according  to  the  evidence  of 
the  U.  S.  Census  Bureau,  1905)  received  less  than 
what  might  have  been  roughly  regarded  as  an 
average  subsistence-rate,  i.  e.  $8  per  week. 

It  is  clear  that  here  we  have  a  situation  deserv- 
ing most  earnest  consideration,  if  by  any  means 
the  womankind  of  our  civilization  can  be  rescued 
from  the  drift  of  those  social-economic  forces 
which  have  brought  about  this  result.  Nowhere 
is  the  need  of  persistent  industrial  rebuilding 


200  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

greater  than  here.  Before  we  discuss  it,  however, 
we  must  observe  the  significant  changes  occasioned 
by  the  war,  the  further  great  influx  of  women  into 
wage-earning  work,  the  direct  replacement  of  men 
by  women,  and  the  entry  of  women  into  occupa- 
tions hitherto  monopolized  by  men. 

The  process  may  be  seen  more  clearly  under 
European  conditions,  where  the  pressure  and  the 
displacement  have  been  greater  in  proportion  than 
in  America.  Thus  in  the  United  Kingdom,  by 
January,  1918,  the  number  of  women  and  girls  in 
industrial  occupations  had  increased,  as  compared 
with  July,  1914,  from  2, 175, 500  to  2,708,500,  and 
in  other  occupations  (commercial,  agricultural, 
transport,  professional,  and  governmental)  from 
1,099,500  to  2,042,500,  making  a  total  increase  of 
44  per  cent.  The  same  authority  (the  British 
Labor  Gazette)  places  at  1,442,000  the  instances 
in  which  women  have  directly  replaced  men.  In 
the  earlier  period  of  the  war  the  influx  of  women 
was  mainly  into  the  unskilled  occupations  in  which 
they  had  previously  been  engaged,  but  the  pressure 
of  military  demands  gradually  broke  through  the 
barriers  of  convention  prejudice,  and  both  real  and 
unreal  sex-distinction  which  had  made  certain  oc- 


THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN  aoi 

cupations,  such  as  those  of  bank-clerk,  ticket-col- 
lector, conductor,  chauffeur,  switch-tender,  and 
many  others,  predominantly  or  entirely  a  male  pre- 
serve. 

These  changes,  which  have  occurred  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  in  all  belligerent  countries,  make 
more  imperative  the  settlement  of  an  old  industrial 
problem,  the  relation  of  women  to  men  in  economic 
life.  The  pre-war  position  was  most  unsatisfac- 
tory. Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  civilized  world 
had  allowed  itself  to  become  the  victim  of  its  own 
technological  advance.  There  was  perhaps  never 
a  time  when  the  working  spheres  of  men  and 
women  were  quite  distinct — Eve  delved  as  well  as 
span — but  there  was  certainly  a  time,  before  the 
days  of  wagery  and  machinery,  when  the  unequal 
competition  of  women  and  men  was  unknown. 
The  industrial  revolution  put  an  end  to  that,  and 
its  later  developments,  breaking  ever  more  com- 
pletely the  system  of  apprenticeship  and  the  de- 
marcation of  crafts,  fostered  a  very  direct  an- 
tagonism between  the  interests  of  men  and  of 
women  in  industry.  Economic  necessity  drove 
women  into  industry,  but  under  conditions  which 
ensured  that,  wherever  they  entered  in  numbers, 


202  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

the  rate  of  wages  fell  below  subsistence  level. 
(Even  in  occupations  where  men  retained  their 
"monopoly,"  the  fact  that  their  womenfolk  en- 
tered into  industry,  and  thus  contributed  to  the 
family  wage,  lowered  their  competitive  limit  and 
probably  tended  to  reduce  their  wages.  This 
conclusion  is  suggested  at  any  rate  by  the  lower 
level  of  men's  wages  in  "textile"  towns,  where 
nearly  all  the  adult  members  of  working  families 
are  engaged  in  industrial  work,  as  compared  with 
the  rates  in  the  "steel"  towns,  where  the  men  form 
the  majority  of  workers.)  It  was  thus  inevitable 
that  men  should  jealously  guard  from  their  in- 
vasion whatever  preserves  they  could.  But,  as 
the  workers  have  so  often  found,  the  industrial 
process  is  too  powerful  to  be  stayed  by  conven- 
tions, and  the  war  has  merely  hastened  an  inevit- 
able evolution.  No  restoration  of  old  privileges 
is  likely  to  avail;  no  general  withdrawal  of  women 
from  the  newly  occupied  territory  is  probable — 
or  even  desirable.  Another  way  out  has  to  be 
found. 

The  root  of  the  trouble  is  of  course  the  social- 
economic  distinction  between  the  man  and  the 
woman,  the  different  relationship  to  the  family 


THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN  203 

unit  which  makes  it  possible  for  women,  in  spite  of 
various  real  handicaps  of  sex,  to  underbid  men. 
It  is  a  peculiarly  ironic  situation,  since  it  was  his 
sex-advantage,  from  the  economic  point  of  view, 
which  placed  on  man's  shoulders  the  economic  bur- 
den of  the  family,  thus  enabling  the  woman,  in 
the  turn  of  circumstance,  so  to  outbid  his  labor  as 
to  imperil  the  basis  of  their  common  welfare. 

So  little  has  been  done  to  meet  this  situation, 
so  closely  is  it  bound  up  with  those  sex  prejudices 
which  still  tangle  our  civilization,  that  only  a  first 
approach  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  seems 
possible  to-day.  What  is  in  the  first  place  most 
necessary  and  most  feasible  is  the  organization  of 
women  workers.  Most  feasible,  but  still  very 
difficult,  in  view  of  their  own  apathy,  of  their  gen- 
eral transitoriness  in  industry,  of  the  obstacles  put 
in  the  way  not  merely  by  employers  but  often  by 
male  workers,  and  of  the  never-exhausted  reserves 
of  employable  women.  Nevertheless,  such  re- 
markable and  fruitful  examples  of  organization 
among  women  as  have  been  achieved  in  the  cot- 
ton industry  of  Lancashire  and  in  the  garment- 
making  industry  of  New  York,  Chicago,  and  other 
cities,  offer  grounds  for  hope.  It  is  also  significant 


204  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

that  some  unions  formerly  limited  to  men  have 
opened  their  ranks  to  women  and  are  furthering 
their  organization.  The  activity  of  the  Women's 
Trade  Union  Leagues  of  Great  Britain  and  of  the 
United  States  respectively  and  of  the  British  Na- 
tional Federation  of  Women  Workers  has  met 
with  a  certain  degree  of  success.  What  is  most 
obvious  to  all  who  have  been  in  contact  with  this 
work  is  the  need  for  persistent  education,  a  task 
in  which  the  male  trade  unionists,  in  the  interest 
of  themselves  as  well  as  in  that  of  the  women 
workers,  should  take  the  greatest  share. 

The  phrase  "equal  pay  for  equal  work"  is  often 
taken  as  pointing  the  goal  to  be  sought  in  the  re- 
lation of  men  and  women  in  industry.  But  the 
phrase,  we  ought  clearly  to  realize,  represents  an 
ideal  still  far  distant,  and  one  which,  like  some 
other  phrases  expressing  a  common  standard  for 
men  and  women,  is  by  no  means  self-explanatory. 
If  all  industry  were  on  a  piece-work  basis,  the  ap- 
plication would  be  simpler.  But  the  real  differ- 
ences of  strength,  aptitude,  and  endurance,  be- 
tween men  and  women  make  its  application  to 
time-work  a  matter  of  great  difficulty.  Here  the 
actual  differences  in  economic  efficiency,  varying 


THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN  205 

as  they  do  for  different  types  of  work  in  ways 
which  only  experience  reveals,  must  first  be  de- 
termined, and  this  should  be  the  work  of  a  joint 
committee  in  each  case,  comprising,  besides  repre- 
sentatives of  the  management,  both  women  and 
men  workers.  For  that  large  group  of  occupa- 
tions wherein  the  majority  of  workers  are  women 
receiving  below-subsistence  wages,  the  only  prac- 
ticable method  at  present  seems  to  be  the  estab- 
lishment of  Trade  Boards,  on  the  lines  initiated 
by  the  British  Act  of  1909,  or  of  Minimum  Wage 
Boards,  as  adopted  in  principle  by  the  legislation 
of  over  a  dozen  American  States  and  of  a  few 
Canadian  Provinces. 

All  this  is  of  course  but  a  fragment  of  that 
greater  organization  which  is  needed  to  assure  the 
emancipation  of  women  from  their  present  eco- 
nomic dependence  and  of  men  from  its  direct  and 
indirect  reactions  upon  themselves. 

For  to  reorganize  the  industrial  position  of 
women  on  the  lines  just  indicated,  working  to- 
wards the  attainment  of  virtual  equality  of  re- 
turn for  equality  of  service,  is  to  accept  one  horn 
of  an  old  dilemma,  not  to  remove  it.  The  dilem- 
ma is  simply  this:  if  women  receive  unequal  pay 


206  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

for  equal  work,  it  is  unfair  and  injurious  to  them- 
selves, and  at  the  same  time  it  creates  a  type  of 
competition  which  is  unfair  and  injurious  to  men; 
if  on  the  other  hand  women  receive  equal  pay  for 
equal  work,  is  that,  too,  not  unfair  and  injurious 
to  men  who,  as  family  "bread-winners,"  still  bear 
the  heavier  burden?  If  taxation  is  considered 
fair  when  it  is  graduated  in  accordance  with  the 
economic  capacities  of  the  payer,  why  not  wage- 
rates  graduated  in  accordance  with  the  economic 
burdens  of  the  payee  ?  Would  not  the  very  rem- 
edy proposed  against  unfair  competition,  equality 
of  pay,  operate  to  produce  another  and  perhaps 
more  fatal  inequality?  And  is  not  the  disparity 
of  burden  in  question,  establishing  as  it  does  dif- 
ferential limits  of  competition  for  men  and  for 
women  respectively,  one  of  the  causes  which 
naturally  produced  the  difference  of  rate?  If 
you  abolish  the  difference,  stemming  competition 
by  decreeing  equality  of  rates,  what  guarantee  is 
there  that  this  equality  is  consistent  with  the  neces- 
sary level  set  as  a  minimum  for  the  family  bread- 
winner? 

The  dilemma  is  real  and  not  to  be  evaded.    By 
itself  the  alternative  for  which  we  have  argued 


207 

is  no  complete  solution  of  our  problem.  So.  far  as 
that  can  be  found,  it  must  be  sought  through  the 
development  of  the  general  economic  independence 
of  women,  not  merely  of  their  equality  in  wage- 
earning.  Here  is  a  momentous  enterprise  that 
civilization  may  some  day  undertake.  It  involves, 
in  especial,  such  a  reorganization  of  society  that 
the  task  of  raising  children  is  itself  accounted 
an  economic  service  (being  also  of  course  in- 
finitely more)  and  not  a  cause  of  dependency.  It 
is  the  partial  independence,  economically,  of 
women  which  has  created  this  fateful  dilemma: 
independence  as  receiving  wages  at  all,  partial  as 
receiving  them  on  a  different  scale  and  only  for 
such  service  as  lies  without  the  peculiar  function 
of  women.  At  one  time  all  forms  of  work  fell 
within  the  wageless  "household  duties"  of  women 
— then  there  was  no  dilemma.  This  arose  with 
the  displacement  of  home  work  which  was  a  part 
of  what  we  call  the  Industrial  Revolution.  When 
women  followed  their  work  to  its  new  locus  in  fac- 
tory or  store,  they  broke,  all  unintentionally  at 
first,  the  circle  of  dependent  domesticity.  The 
process  goes  on.  Not  only  is  the  displacement  of 
home  work  proceeding  as  restaurant  and  bakeshop 


and  laundry  cater  to  needs  once  supplied  within 
the  household,  but  there  is  besides  a  tendency  to 
the  division  of  labor  in  household  work  itself,  so 
that  wage-earners  are  being  specialized  to  do  the 
cleaning  and  mending  as  well  as  the  plumbing  and 
decorating.  It  may  well  be  that  some  day  only 
the  crowning  occupation  of  motherhood  will  re- 
main, so  far  as  the  majority  of  women  are  con- 
cerned, outside  the  sphere  of  service  which  has  a 
direct  economic  valuation.  If  the  suggestion  that 
the  service  of  motherhood  should  also  be  included 
within  that  sphere  seems  like  sacrilege  to  some, 
it  is  because  of  a  false  and  itself  degrading  theory 
of  the  dependence  of  other  forms  of  service  on 
the  economic  return  which  they  bring.  It  in  no 
way  lessens  the  dignity  or  quality  or  social  in- 
commensurability of  the  service  rendered  by,  say, 
the  statesman  or,  if  you  like,  the  priest  that  he 
finds  in  his  work  the  means  of  his  support.  At 
present  the  most  vital  form  of  home  service  is  an 
alternative  to  wage-earning,  and  one  result  is,  in 
many  cases,  a  disastrous  dilemma.  Many  mar- 
ried women — and  not  these  alone — have  to-day  to 
choose  between  home-duty  and  wage-earning,  and 
both  themselves  and  their  society  must  suffer 


THE  LABOR  OF  WOMEN  209 

whichever  of  these  bitter  alternatives  they  choose. 
It  is  this  truth  which  has  led,  in  particular,  to 
schemes  and  systems  of  "mothers'  allowances"  or 
"pensions,"  as  a  further  step  along  the  road  lead- 
ing to  economic  independence  in  return  for  service. 
But  this  theme  lies  beyond  the  scope  of  our  pres- 
ent subject,  beyond  the  compass  of  mere  present- 
day  industrial  reorganization.  It  must  therefore 
suffice  to  state  the  conviction  that  age-old  social 
forces,  initiated  long  before  the  existing  indus- 
trial order  was  constituted,  though  particularly 
active  in  our  own  times,  are  working  towards  the 
consummation  of  that  equality  in  difference  of  the 
sexes  which  will  bring,  as  one  of  its  fruits,  the 
restoration  of  their  economic  harmony. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS 

Reconstruction,  not  restoration.  The  three  great 
industrial  problems  of  the  day.  One  way  of 
solution  for  all  three.  Big  industry  and  big 
ideas.  "More  light — but  also  more  warmth." 
Education,  scientific  and  social.  True  and 
false  applications  of  science  to  industry.  The 
shortcomings  of  the  Taylor  plan.  Experi- 
ments in  the  garment  industry.  The  need  for 
social  education.  The  end  behind  the  means. 
Labor  as  also  deliverer. 


IT  is  a  sound  instinct  that  has  prompted  the 
vogue  of  the  word  "reconstruction"  in  these  days. 
It  is  reconstruction,  not  restoration,  that  should 
follow  the  war.  Return  is  now  impossible,  across 
the  chasm  of  war,  to  the  conditions  that  preceded 
it.  Return,  were  it  possible,  would  in  any  case 
be  undesirable.  Those  who  advocate  it  convict 
themselves  of  the  most  fatal  of  inabilities,  the 

inability    to    profit    by    experience.     Experience 

210 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  211 

teaches  fools,  runs  the  proverb:  on  the  contrary, 
the  fools  are  just  those  whom  experience  does  not 
teach. 

There  are  three  great  industrial  problems  that 
now  the  war  is  ended  demand  our  most  earnest 
thought,  one  of  a  temporary  and  two  of  a  perma- 
nent nature: 

1 i )  How  to  absorb  in  the  ordinary  industries 
of  peace,  with  as  little  dislocation  and  discontent 
as  possible,  the  soldiers  who  have  returned  and  the 
workers  who  have  been  engaged  on  war  work; 

(2)  How  to  remove  the  disintegrating  con- 
flict between  labor  and  capital  which  was  grow- 
ing more  and  more  bitter  before  the  war; 

(3)  How  to  increase  the  efficiency  and  pro- 
ductivity of  industry,  not  only  in  order  to  make 
good  the  material  ravages  of  war,  but  to  provide 
those  material  resources  on  which — though  not  on 
them  alone — depend  the  removal  of  the  existing 
mass  of  poverty  and  the  provision  of  that  oppor- 
tunity  and   leisure   without   which   life   remains 
tragically  unfulfilled. 

These  are  tremendous  problems.  Taken  to- 
gether, they  may  well  seem  overwhelming.  If 
each  had  to  find  a  separate  solution,  we  might 


2U  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

well  despair  of  the  issue.  But  I  hold  that  the 
same  solution  can  and  must  be  found  for  all  the 
three.  First  let  us  face  the  surely  obvious  fact 
that  needs  so  great  and  so  urgent  cannot  be  met 
without  a  drastic  revision  of  the  whole  industrial 
order.  If  we  are  not  prepared  for  that  we  must 
admit  the  alternative  of  drift  and  chaos.  The 
other  alternative  means  the  substitution  of  or- 
ganized cooperation  for  industrial  conflict  and 
disorganization.  Some  of  the  applications  of  this 
principle  we  have  already  discussed — a  few  out  of 
many.  What  these  and  other  reforms  can  ac- 
complish is,  simply,  the  broadening  of  the  common 
interest.  This  involves,  let  us  face  it  frankly, 
the  elimination  of  the  mere  wage-earner  on  the 
one  hand  and  consequently  of  the  mere  capitalist 
on  the  other.  The  interests  of  these  are  inevit- 
ably opposed.  The  opposing  interests,  if  indeed 
there  is  to  be  advance  at  all,  must  somehow  be  har- 
monized, be  assimilated. 

This  fact  is  being  recognized  by  the  more  far- 
sighted  employers  of  labor.  Thus  Lord  Lever- 
hulme  has  said:  "It  is  not  only  that  the  wage- 
system,  by  precluding  from  a  share  of  the  fruits 
of  industry,  is  manifestly  unfair,  but  it  is  also 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  213 

apparent  even  to  the  least  thoughtful  that  the 
wage-system  dulls  and  deadens  the  keenness  of 
even  the  best  and  most  conscientious  workers,  and 
produces  a  mob  of  'ca'  canny'  shirkers  and  slack- 
ers." 

If  this  be  true,  what  condemnation  could  be 
more  great?  If  it  be  true,  is  it  not  worth  some 
risk,  some  enterprise,  some  thought,  some  sacri- 
fice, to  establish  a  better  system  which  will  re- 
place one  so  detrimental  to  human  worth  as  well 
as  to  material  prosperity?  And  if  that  is  possible 
at  all,  it  must  be  possible  now,  when  the  iron  of 
our  customs  has  become  malleable  in  the  fire  of 
war. 

It  is  the  day  of  big  things.  We  have  witnessed 
the  biggest  armed  conflict  of  all  history:  we  shall 
miss  its  monstrous  meaning  unless  we  perceive  it 
as  the  clash  of  forces  which  our  civilization  had 
engendered  but  was  impotent  to  control.  In  the 
face  of  the  big  forces,  both  material  and  spiritual, 
which  our  age  has  brought  to  birth  we  have  stood 
like  children  possessed  of  a  new  engine  whose 
powers  attract  and  frighten  them — or  like  the 
magi  of  medieval  story  who  raise  a  spirit  so 
mighty  that  they  shrink  back  from  its  manifesta- 


214  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

tion.  In  industry,  as  elsewhere,  bigness  rules. 
Economic  forces  unite  and  divide  mankind  over 
all  the  earth,  here  bringing  them  together  in  one 
vast  network  of  production  and  exchange,  there; 
in  the  apportionment  of  the  spoils,  cutting  great 
lines  of  cleavage  between  them.  It  is  the  day  of 
big  things,  but  our  ideas  have  been  too  narrow  for 
them.  We  have  misunderstood  bigness  while  we 
admired  and  followed  it.  We  have  thought  in 
terms  of  size,  of  mere  aggregation;  of  force,  of 
mere  cumulation.  But  bigness  is  more  than  these. 
Where  it  exists  there  must  be  a  big  order,  too — 
or  else  the  overgrown  mass  collapses  of  its  own 
mere  weight. 

Big  industry  demands  big  purpose.  Big  indus- 
try has  big  problems,  but  it  is  thereby  freed  from 
little  problems.  Small-scale  business  in  a  grow- 
ing world  is  hand-to-mouth  business,  hazardously 
competitive,  unstable.  No  wide  policy  is  here 
possible,  no  statesmanship,  no  foundation  of  gen- 
erous and  secure  relationship.  Small  business 
must  seek  every  immediate  advantage,  the  profit 
of  the  moment,  lest  another  snatch  it  away.  Life 
becomes  a  struggle  with  little  mercy,  and  the 
worker  in  particular  is  never  freed  from  grinding 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  215 

exactions,  the  operation  of  the  "iron  law"  which 
pulls  his  wages  to  the  subsistence  level.  Large- 
scale  business,  in  relation  with  the  social  and 
economic  conditions  on  which  it  depends,  makes 
possible  a  wider  view,  a  more  constructive  policy. 
By  breaking  the  immediate  insistence  of  the  com- 
petitive struggle  it  makes  possible,  could  men  only 
shake  off  the  habits  of  the  passing  age,  the  de- 
liberate foundation  of  a  more  harmonious  and  en- 
during order. 

So  men  may  come  to  build  what,  in  comparison 
with  the  present,  may  well  be  called  the  "great 
society" — not  merely  the  great  State,  but  that 
manifold  life  of  coordinated  and  yet  spontaneous 
activities  which,  instead  of  being  dominated  and 
in  part  repressed  by  a  State  devoted  to  the  pur- 
suit of  power,  will  find  in  the  State  one  of  its 
essential  organs. 

To  many  such  a  project  will  appear  the  Uto- 
pian dream  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 
But  every  act  of  every  man's  life  is  a  record  of 
his  belief  that  the  world  can  be  changed  for  the 
better — so  far  as  he  is  concerned — and  if  his 
action  be  a  cooperative  one,  so  far  as  that  circle 
can  extend.  Anyhow,  it  has  now  been  made 


216  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

abundantly  clear  that  men  can  make  themselves  a 
new  hell,  which  very  fact  may  perhaps  inspire 
them  to  enhance  their  estimate  of  the  possibility 
of  making  a  new  heaven.  In  the  order  of  social 
causality  there  are  upward  and  downward  spirals. 
Thus,  in  the  labor  field  for  instance,  low  efficiency 
means  low  wages,  which  means  low  living  stand- 
ards, which  react  again  on  efficiency  and  on  wages ; 
high  efficiency  permits  high  wages,  which  in  turn 
make  possible  leisure  and  education,  which  make 
possible  higher  efficiency,  which  makes  possible 
higher  wages,  and  so  on.  Of  course  these  spirals 
of  causality  may  be  crossed  and  broken  by  social 
forces  of  another  kind.  But  they  are  nevertheless 
real  and  most  significant,  and  they  justify  at  once 
the  hopes  and  the  efforts  of  those  who  believe  in 
"reconstruction." 

II 

We  have  been  concerned  in  these  chapters 
mainly  with  questions  of  organization.  But  or- 
ganization is  the  embodiment  of  a  spirit,  and  re* 
organization  requires  in  the  first  place  a  new  spirit. 
Science,  though  most  needful,  will  not  alone  secure 
the  desired  end.  In  the  language  of  the  British 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  217 

Labor  Manifesto  there  is  needed  "more  light — 
but  also  more  warmth."  Science  (in  the  nar- 
rower sense  of  the  term)  must  be  supplemented 
by  fellowship.  Only  when  these  two  link  forces 
can  the  battle  be  on. 

We  need,  more  than  anything  else,  education. 
All  else  depends  upon  that.  We  need  a  great  de- 
velopment of  both  technical  and  social  education; 
and  the  more  attention  we  devote  to  the  one  the 
more  should  we  devote  to  the  other.  It  is,  quite 
strictly,  impossible  to  spend  too  much  on  education, 
which  is  the  soul  of  the  progress  of  men  and  of  na- 
tions. Technical  education  is  the  source  of  power, 
social  education  the  source  of  understanding;  and 
power  together  with  understanding  has  led  man- 
kind thus  far  on  its  untraveled  road.  It  is  a  happy 
sign  that  governments  and  peoples  are  awakening 
to  the  immense  value  of  scientific  research  and  be- 
ginning to  make  some  proper  provision  for  it,  in- 
stead of,  as  so  often  hitherto,  regarding  it  as  an 
amiable  luxury  to  be  pursued  by  aid  of  such  meager 
resources  as  devoted  scientists  could  muster.  One 
discovery  of  science  may  serve  mankind  better  than 
an  age  of  unenlightened  toil.  But  science  is  not 


218  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

enough.     As  the  war  has  shown,  it  can  either 
destroy  or  fulfill. 

It  is  when  we  come  to  the  relationship  of  man 
to  man  that  this  objective  science  proves  inade- 
quate. This  may  be  illustrated  by  the  fate  of  the 
Taylor  plan  of  "scientific  management."  Taylor 
himself  was  particularly  concerned  with  one  kind 
of  industrial  waste,  that  due  to  the  maladjustment 
of  worker  to  work  in  the  sphere  of  heavy  un- 
skilled labor.  He  wrote  a  famous  little  book  to 
demonstrate  how  the  application  of  the  simplest 
scientific  principles  would  save  the  worker  from 
overexertion  and  fatigue,  and  at  the  same  time 
effect  a  marvelous  increase  in  his  productivity. 
The  demonstration  seemed  complete.  "Scientific 
management"  was  acclaimed  by  many  as  a  new 
stage  of  the  Industrial  Revolution.  Further  ap- 
plications of  the  principle  were  developed  by  Tay- 
lor and  his  followers,  such  as  Emerson  and  Gantt. 
But  the  workers  showed  a  particular  hostility  to 
this  method  of  saving  them  from  strain  and  fa- 
tigue, which  disconcerted  Taylor  very  much.  It 
was  something  more  than  the  usual  instinctive 
fear  of  unemployment  through  efficiency.  It  was 
also  the  not  unjustified  fear  of  economic  degrada- 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  219 

tion,  of  the  loss  of  initiative,  and  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  those  safeguards  which  they  had  painfully 
built  against  internecine  competition.  Taylor  had 
thought  and  planned  too  much  as  if  the  worker 
were  merely  a  means  to  production,  as  if  he  were 
to  be  treated  like  a  machine,  an  automaton,  a  will- 
less  subject  for  stop-watch  experimentation.  His 
not  to  reason  why ;  his  to  bend  his  back  when  he 
was  told,  to  rest  when  he  was  told,  to  start  again 
when  he  was  told.  And  ^he  worker,  so  strangely 
objecting,  spoiled  many  a.  promising  experiment. 
Fundamentally,  it  was  not  that  he  preferred  over- 
exertion  and  fatigue;  it  was  not  that  he  preferred 
to  be  less  productive ;  it  was  that,  like  the  rest  of 
us,  he  was  a  human  being  first. 

Yet  the  heart  of  Taylor's  idea  was  sound.  Inef- 
ficiency is  always  evil,  defeating  our  purposes,  and 
science  is  always  right.  What  was  wrong  in  Tay- 
lor's scheme  was,  in  a  sense,  that  it  was  not  scien- 
tific enough.  He  did  not  realize  how  efficiency  de- 
pends on  cooperation,  and  cooperation  on  common 
interest.  His  science  was  inadequate  because  it 
left  out  of  account  the  most  important  factor  of 
all.  His  plan  was  no  remedy  against  the  condi- 
tions which  breed  listlessness  and  slacking.  It 


220  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

contained  no  answer,  for  example,  to  the  unhappily 
common  argument,  "What's  the  use?  If  we  drive 
too  many  rivets  to-day,  to-morrow  we'll  get  hell 
for  letting  up."  On  the  contrary,  it  was  calculated 
to  foster  that  spirit,  by  still  further  reducing  the 
interest  of  the  worker  in  his  work.  It  was  not 
scientific  enough,  because  it  ignored  psychology. 
It  is  there  that  the  science  of  autocracy  always 
fails. 

Inefficiency  is  always  evil.  There  can  be  no 
general  gain  from  deliberate  limitation  of  output, 
whether  adopted  by  labor  with  a  view  to  prolong- 
ing employment,  or  by  capital  with  a  view  to  in- 
creasing profits.  "What  the  nation  needs,"  says 
the  British  labor  manifesto  already  quoted,  "is 
undoubtedly  a  great  bound  onward  in  its  aggregate 
productivity."  That  is  a  necessary  condition  of 
our  release  from  the  heavy  burden  of  poverty. 

What  then  is  the  solution?  It  is  instructive  to 
compar/e  Taylor's  method  of  applying  science  with 
another  which  not  long  ago  was  adopted  in  that 
home  of  significant  experimentation,  the  dress  and 
waist  industry  of  New  York  City.  Here  too 
science  has  been  invoked  to  redeem  the  loss  due  to 
the  ordinary  haphazard  methods  of  working.  This 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  221 

is  being  achieved,  however,  not  through  the  fiat 
of  the  management  but  by  a  joint  board  of  em- 
ployers and  workers,  with  in  addition  some  repre- 
sentatives of  the  public.  Employers  and  workers 
have  in  fact  cooperated  to  investigate  the  best  con- 
ditions of  work,  to  make  a  real  scientific  study 
of  the  nature  of  the  materials  and  the  skill  of 
the  operators  in  their  relation,  to  the  various 
results  desired.  The  workers  entered  whole- 
heartedly into  this  scheme  of  "work-analysis,"  as 
being  their  own  plan  also,  and  they  in  fact  share 
in  the  expense  as  well  as  in  the  deliberation  it 
involves.  It  promises  consequences  of  far-reach- 
ing importance,  an  efficiency  and  a  productivity 
beneficial  to  all  concerned.  And  it  is  more,  not 
less,  scientific  than  the  Taylor  plan,  because  it  takes 
into  consideration  the  psychology  of  the  worker 
as  well  as  the  technology  of  the  work.  Partial 
and  limited  as  it  is,  it  does  suggest  the  union  of 
science  and  fellowship.  It  is  at  least  an  attempt  to 
reconcile  these  two  factors  which  must  somehow 
be  reconciled,  self-government  and  science,  the  one 
the  condition  and  the  other  the  means  of  the 
realization  of  all  for  which  men  live. 

I  have  not  cited  this  case  as  revealing  any  com- 


222  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

plete  solution  of  the  problem  of  industrial  rela- 
tions. It  is  far  from  that,  but  it  is  nevertheless 
one  of  those  experiments  which  reveal  a  step  far- 
ther on  the  road.  The  goal  of  science  joined  to 
fellowship  is  still  far  ahead — a  thousand  obstacles 
of  self-interest,  ignorance,  and  misunderstanding 
lie  between — but  every  step  that  brings  it  nearer 
makes  more  clear  that  vision  of  the  goal  without 
which  nothing  can  be  attained  at  all. 

Science  provides  the  means,  but  we  badly  need 
enlightenment  as  to  the  ends  they  serve.  Science 
shows  the  road  to  productivity,  but  productivity 
for  what?  If  by  our  social  indifference  and  lack 
of  direction  we  increase  productivity  by  means 
which  wear  or  degrade  the  producer,  what  good 
is  that  to  society?  If  productivity  is  increased 
by  the  labor  of  children,  thus  debarred  from  edu- 
cation and  subject  to  toil  that  rubs  the  bloom  off 
youth,  does  the  country  gain  or  lose  ?  What  good 
is  it,  at  that  price,  to  sell,  let  us  say,  more  textiles 
in  the  South  American  market?  Productivity  is 
essential,  but  it  must  not  be  at  the  cost  of  the 
producer.  Productivity  is  justified  only  by  the 
welfare  it  makes  actual.  It  is  no  idol  to  be 
worshiped  nor  any  justification  of  those  specious 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  223 

arguments  which  bid  us  acquiesce  in  evil  condi- 
tions for  its  sake,  arguments  which  are  cal- 
culated to  support  our  mental  inertia  and  to  main- 
tain our  mental  comfort  undisturbed.  This  is  in- 
deed the  ugliest  thing  in  human  nature,  that  men 
can  come  to  value  their  comfort  and  serenity  about 
the  life  and  happiness  of  multitudes. 

Against  this  the  only  hope  lies  in  social  educa- 
tion; education  in  the  character  and  needs  of  our 
society  and  in  the  real  conditions  on  which  its 
greatness  depends;  education  which  makes  plain 
the  end  behind  the  means,  the  idea  and  the  forms 
of  social  welfare  to  which  all  economic  activity 
should  be  subservient;  education  which,  in  short, 
can  help  men  to  live  together  as  well  as  to  work 
together.  For  no  more  in  living  well  than  in 
working  well  do  our  unguided  instincts  serve. 

Education  may  not  engender  the  spirit  of  hu- 
manity, but  it  directs  it,  justifies  it,  and  thereby 
stimulates  it.  Education  shows  the  economy  of 
cooperation.  It  discovers  connection  and  mutual 
dependence  in  what  seemed  unrelated.  It  alone 
can  destroy  the  basis  in  ignorance  on  which  the 
whole  spirit  of  caste,  which  denies  likeness  and 


224  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

draws  apart  from  that  of  which  it  is  a  part,  is 
founded. 

If  this  avails  not,  nothing  avails.  You  may 
deny  the  old  definition  of  man,  which  distinguished 
him  as  the  rational  among  animals.  On  the  con- 
trary, you  may  say,  a  bundle  of  prejudices  and 
habits,  affinities  and  antipathies  (which  is  merely 
to  insist  that  he  is  animal  as  well  as  rational). 
But  you  cannot  deny  that  he  is,  if  not  always 
rational,  still  always  reasoning,  for  he  makes  his 
prejudices  the  grounds  of  his  too  simple  conclu- 
sions. The  most  irrational  types,  as,  for  example, 
the  jingo  militarist,  are  often  the  most  rigorous 
in  their  logic.  Now  the  prejudices  of  men  de- 
pend on  their  environment  present  and  past,  on 
their  social  conditions,  largely  on  their  education. 
rAnd  no  one  denies  that  these  may  be  in  a  measure 
changed.  This  is,  in  a  word,  the  case  for  social 
education.  The  knowledge  of  the  actual  condi- 
tions under  which  men  live,  of  the  causes  and  con- 
sequences of  their  modes  of  life  and  of  work,  of 
the  ways  in  which  institutions  advance  or  retard 
their  ends — this,  most  imperfect  as  it  is,  consti- 
tutes the  best  means  available  for  dispelling  prej- 


THE  DAY  OF  BIG  THINGS  225 

udices  and  so  helping  to  convert  reasoning  into 
rational  creatures. 

Labor  may  thus,  in  seeking  deliverance,  prove 
also  a  deliverer.  The  "labor  movement"  in  the 
world  of  to-day,  in  so  far  as  it  insistently  brings 
to  our  attention  the  maladjustments  of  our  social 
order,  is  helping,  and  if  wisely  directed  can  help 
still  more,  to  break  that  bondage  of  custom  and 
complacency  which  robs  ideals  of  their  power. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SOME   PRACTICAL   CONCLUSIONS 

IF  the  argument  set  out  in  the  preceding  pages 
holds,  there  are  certain  large  policies  which  need 
to  be  carried  into  effect  that  the  great  cleavage  of 
labor  and  capital  may  be  narrowed  to  a  normal 
conflict  of  orderly  social  forces,  instead  of  being 
widened  into  the  gulf  of  anarchy.  These  may  be 
summarized  as : 

I.  The  establishment  of  specific  minima  and 
maxima  to  ensure  a  basic  standard  of  well- 
being,  and 

II.  The  assurance  to  the  worker  of  his  so- 
cial position  as  finally  not  a  cost  of  but  a  part- 
ner in  production. 

The  minima  and  maxima  referred  to  in  I  would 
include : 

(a)  maximum  hours  of  work  for  every  class 
of  worker  in  every  industry  (subject,  of 
course,  to  special  arrangements  for  voluntary 

overtime  under  certain  circumstances) ; 
226 


SOME  PRACTICAL  CONCLUSIONS     227 

(b)  minimum  wage-rates  for  unskilled  and 
unorganized  labor  based  on  the   principle 
that  no  one  who  serves  the  community  shall 
receive  for  that  service  less  than  suffices  to 
ensure  for  him  or  her  the  material  conditions 
of  healthy  living; 

(c)  minimum  wage-rates  for  every  grade 
and  kind  of  worker  above  the  classes  included 
under  (b),  determined  periodically  by  joint 
agreement  of  all  parties  directly  concerned, 
it  being  stipulated,  as  a  necessary  condition, 
that  all  shall  have  free  access  to  every  form 
of  technical  and  occupational  training  and 
thereby  free  entrance  into  any  skilled  trade; 

(d)  minimum  age  regulations  so  as  to  pre- 
vent the  exploitation  of  children  and  young 

persons  in  industry,  and  to  ensure  the  proper 
education  of  all  young  persons; 

(e)  minimum  requirements  in  each  industry 
to  ensure  the  protection  of  the  worker,  male 
and  female,  against  all  avoidable  fatigue,  ac- 
cident, ill-health,  poisoning  and  disease;  to- 
gether with  insurance  against  the  economic 
consequences  of  these  evils. 


228  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

Certain  of  these  conditions  can  best  be  secured 
by  international  agreement.  The  wider  the  area 
over  which  uniformity  in  respect  to  minimal  re- 
quirements is  attained,  the  better.  Others  are  or 
can  be  attained  by  independent  legislative  enact- 
ment. But  in  nearly  all  cases  such  measures  find 
their  strongest  and  best  support  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  industries  concerned  as,  within  limits 
prescribed  by  the  State,  self-determining  bodies. 

The  minima  referred  to  under  (b)  and  (c) 
are  particularly  hard  to  apply,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  principles  involved  will  call  for  a 
special  subdivision  of  economic  science.  An 
initial  difficulty  often  raised  may  here  be  briefly 
dismissed,  viz.  that  a  rise  of  wages  means  a  rise 
of  prices,  and  so  merely  creates  a  vicious  circle  at 
the  end  of  which  the  worker  is  no  better  off  than 
before.  This  prima-fade  view  ignores  the  rela- 
tion between  prices  and  the  currency-basis.  The 
employer  who  resists  the  demand  for  higher  wages 
knows  better.  In  general  it  is  not  possible  to 
raise  prices  at  will.  No  more  is  it  possible  to  raise 
wages  at  will,  but  only  where  the  industry  does  or 
can  produce  a  surplus,  a  further  portion  of  which 
can  be  diverted  to  wages.  (But  the  minimum 


SOME  PRACTICAL  CONCLUSIONS     229 

wage  should  in  every  case  be  regarded  as  a  first 
lien  on  industry.  Unless  it  can  support  that,  it  is 
insolvent  and  an  encumbrance  to  the  general  in- 
dustrial life.)  Under  conditions  of  monopoly  or 
quasi-monopoly  the  control  of  prices  by  capital 
may  be  such  as  to  create  the  vicious  circle  alluded 
to :  and  under  these  conditions  special  regulations 
are  necessary,  nationalization  being  always  possi- 
ble as  a  last  resort. 

The  assurances  referred  to  in  II  must  insure 
the  principle  that  labor  is,  from  the  social  stand- 
point, not  a  cost  of  but  a  partner  in  production, 
and  the  following  conditions  are  necessary: 

(a)  Security  against  unemployment  and  in 
the  last  resort,  wherever  that  proves  impos- 
sible, security    (through  insurance)    against 
the  consequences  of  unemployment; 

(b)  Security  against  arbitrary  dismissal,  un- 
fair treatment,  and  exploitation  of  any  kind. 

These  assurances,  however,  cannot  be  attained, 
nor  in  any  case  would  they  suffice,  without  a  fur- 
ther provision  of  the  first  importance,  viz.  that 
the  organizations  of  the  workers,  where  they 
exist,  be  brought  into  direct  relation  to  the  manage- 


230  LABOR  IN  THE  CHANGING  WORLD 

ment,  being  fully  informed  of  the  condition  and 
progress  of  the  industry  in  the  particular  work- 
shop and  in  general,  and  that  the  workers,  in  so 
far  as  organized,  be  admitted  to  any  council  which 
has  to  do  with  determining  the  conditions  of  their 
work. 

A  complementary  condition  is  the  recognition, 
on  the  part  of  labor,  that  all  organization  creates 
in  some  sense  a  monopoly,  and  that  therefore,  if 
it  receives  these  assurances  against  capitalistic 
monopoly,  the  community  is  in  turn  entitled  to  a 
still  wider  assurance,  viz.  that  it  shall  have, 
through  freely  constituted  government,  the  final 
voice,  when  that  becomes  necessary,  in  the  co- 
ordination of  all  the  conflicting  interests  within  it. 
If  labor  is  given  these  assurances  that  its  own 
special  needs  shall  not  be  over-ridden,  it  must  in 
turn  offer  assurances  that  it  shall  not,  in  pursuit  of 
its  own  interests,  disregard  or  break  its  obliga- 
tions under  law  to  the  community  at  large.  The 
establishment  of  special  industrial  courts,  advo- 
cated in  c.  VII,  would  make  vastly  easier  this  co- 
ordination of  interests. 


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